oom.

The superior was on her knees at a table. She lifted a calm and
spiritual face as Greta approached.

"Reverend mother," said Greta, "I am leaving you this moment."

"So soon, my daughter?"

"My husband has sent for me; he will meet me at the railway station at
twelve."

"Why did he not come himself?"

"He is ill; he has gone direct."

"The hour is late and the message is sudden. Are you satisfied?"

"I am anxious, reverend mother--"

"What is it, my daughter?"

"An old gentleman, a clergyman, Mr. Christian, is coming from
Cumberland. I have expected him hourly, but he is not yet arrived. I
cannot wait; I must rejoin my husband. Will you order that a message be
left for the clergyman?"

"What is the message, my child?"

"Simply that I have returned with my husband by the train leaving St.
Pancras at midnight."

"The lay sister in the hall shall deliver it."

"Who is the sister?"

"Sister Grace."

There was a silence.

"Reverend mother, has Sister Grace ever spoken of the past?"

The superior told a few beads.

"The past is as nothing to us here, my daughter. Within these walls the
world does not enter. In the presence of the Cross the past and the
future are one."

Greta drew a long breath. Then she stooped and kissed the hand of the
superior, and turned softly away.

Greta and the landlady passed out through the deep portico, and the same
nun who had opened the door closed it behind them. Mrs. Drayton clung to
Greta's arm as they went through, and her hand trembled perceptibly.

"Who is she?" whispered the landlady, when they were seated in a cab.

"Sister Grace," said Greta, and turned her head aside.

"I could ha' sworn as she were the mother of my Paul," murmured Mrs.
Drayton.

Greta faced about, but the landlady saw nothing of the look of inquiry;
her eyes, like her thoughts, were far away.

CHAPTER XX.

Though the hour was late, the streets were thronged. The people were
trooping home from the theaters; and the Strand, as Greta and the
landlady crossed it, was choked with cabs and omnibuses. The cab drove
through the Seven Dials, and there the public-houses were disgorging at
every corner their poor ruins of men and women. Shouts, curses,
quarreling, and laughter struck upon the ear above the whir of the
wheels. Unshaven men and unwashed women, squalid children running here
and there among the oyster and orange stalls, thieves, idlers, vagabonds
of all conditions,