ry to imagine the man saying within himself,
"Shall I triumph over God in her heart?" when a faint rustling sound
made him quiver, and the curtain was drawn aside.

Between him and the light stood a woman. Her face was hidden by the veil
that drooped from the folds upon her head; she was dressed according
to the rule of the order in a gown of the colour become proverbial. Her
bare feet were hidden; if the General could have seen them, he would
have known how appallingly thin she had grown; and yet in spite of the
thick folds of her coarse gown, a mere covering and no ornament, he
could guess how tears, and prayer, and passion, and loneliness had
wasted the woman before him.

An ice-cold hand, belonging, no doubt, to the Mother Superior, held back
the curtain. The General gave the enforced witness of their interview a
searching glance, and met the dark, inscrutable gaze of an aged recluse.
The Mother might have been a century old, but the bright, youthful eyes
belied the wrinkles that furrowed her pale face.

"Mme la Duchesse," he began, his voice shaken with emotion, "does your
companion understand French?" The veiled figure bowed her head at the
sound of his voice.

"There is no duchess here," she replied. "It is Sister Theresa whom you
see before you. She whom you call my companion is my mother in God, my
superior here on earth."

The words were so meekly spoken by the voice that sounded in other years
amid harmonious surroundings of refined luxury, the voice of a queen of
fashion in Paris. Such words from the lips that once spoke so lightly
and flippantly struck the General dumb with amazement.

"The Holy Mother only speaks Latin and Spanish," she added.

"I understand neither. Dear Antoinette, make my excuses to her."

The light fell full upon the nun's figure; a thrill of deep emotion
betrayed itself in a faint quiver of her veil as she heard her name
softly spoken by the man who had been so hard in the past.

"My brother," she said, drawing her sleeve under her veil, perhaps to
brush tears away, "I am Sister Theresa."

Then, turning to the Superior, she spoke in Spanish; the General knew
enough of the language to understand what she said perfectly well;
possibly he could have spoken it had he chosen to do so.

"Dear Mother, the gentleman presents his respects to you, and begs you
to pardon him if he cannot pay them himself, but he knows neither of the
languages which you speak----"

The aged nun bent