knows best, dearie, of course. Lie down and go to sleep."

Then silence settled back upon the Convent bombproof, but sleep did not
come to everybody there.

XLIII

The Mother was kneeling, as she had knelt the whole night through, before
the dismantled altar in the battered little chapel of the Convent, with
the big white stars looking down upon her through the gaps in the
shell-torn roof. When it was the matin-hour she rose and rang the bell.
Matins over, she still knelt on. When it was broad day she broke her fast
with the Sisters, and went about the business of the day calmly,
collectedly, capably as ever. Only her face was white and drawn, and great
violet circles were about her great tragical grey eyes.

"The blessed Saint she is!" whispered the nuns one to the other.

If she had heard them, it would have added yet another iron point to the
merciless scourge of her self-scorn.

A Saint, in that stained garment! What tears of bitterness had fallen that
night upon the shameful blots that marred its whiteness! But for Richard's
child, even though she herself should become a castaway, she must go on to
the end. All the chivalry in her rose in arms to defend the young,
shame-burdened, blameless head.

Ah! if she had known?...

Cold, light, cruel eyes had watched from across the river that day as her
tall, imposing figure, side by side with the slender, more lightly-clad
one, moved between the mimosa-bushes and round the river-bend. When the
two were fairly out of sight, the jungle of tree-fern and cactus had
rustled and cracked. Then the burly, thickset, powerful figure of a
bearded man pushed through, traversed the reed-beds, and, leaping from
boulder to boulder, crossed the river. Before long the man was standing on
the patch of trodden grass and flowers in the lee of the great boulder,
shutting up a little single-barrelled, brass-mounted field-glass that had
served him excellently well.

He was Bough, _alias_ Van Busch, otherwise the man who had come in through
the enemy's lines as a runner from Diamond Town, bringing the letter from
a hypothetical Mrs. Casey to a Mr. Casey who did not exist. His light
eyes, that were set flat in their shallow orbits like an adder's, looked
about and all around the place, as he stroked the dense brake of
black-brown beard that cleverly filled in the interval between Mr. Van
Busch's luxuriant whiskers. Presently he stooped and picked up a little
tan-leather gl