l was quiet beneath. Not a
step sounded on the pavement. Before her the blank wall was black, and
the dark, leafless trees stood out from the vague green of the grass
beyond. Against the sky were the dim outlines of the two towers of the
old abbey--by day a great rock for the pigeons that wheeled above the
tumbling sea of the city, by night a skull of stone from which the voice
of the bell told of the flight of time.

Out of the calm of a moment's stupefaction Greta was awakened by a knock
at her door. The novice entered and told her that a woman waited below
to speak with her. Greta betrayed no surprise, and she was beyond the
reach of fresh agitation. Without word or question she followed the
novice to the room where Mrs. Drayton sat.

She recognized the landlady and heard her story. Greta's heart leaped up
at the thought of rejoining her husband. Here was the answer to the
prayer that had gone up she knew not how often from her troubled heart.
Soon she would be sure that Hugh Ritson's threat was vain. Soon she
would be at Paul's side and hold his hand, and no earthly power should
separate them again. Ah, thank God, the merciful Father, who healed the
wounded hearts of His children, she should very soon be happy once more,
and all the sorrows of these past few days would fade away into a dim
memory.

"Twelve o'clock at St. Pancras, and you have the luggage in a cab at the
door, you say?"

"Yes; and there's no time to lose, for, to be sure, the night is going
fast," said Mrs. Drayton.

"And he will be there to meet me?" asked Greta. Her eyes, still wet with
recent tears, danced with a new-found joy.

"Yes, at St. Pancras," said the landlady.

Greta's happiness overflowed. She took the old woman in her arms and
kissed her wizened cheeks.

"Wait a minute--only a minute," she said, and tripped off with the swift
glide of a lapwing. But when she was half-way up the stairs her ardor
was arrested, and she returned with drooping face and steps of lead.

"But why did he not come for me himself?" she asked.

"The gentleman is not well--he is ill," said Mrs. Drayton.

"Ill? You say he is ill? Then he could not come. And I blamed him for
not coming!"

"The gentleman is weak, but noways worse; belike he will go straight off
and meet you at the station."

Greta turned away once again, and went upstairs slowly. At a door on the
first landing she tapped lightly, and when a voice answered from within
she entered the r