safed the
information that it was nine o'clock. There was no one astir, no one on
the road before or behind him. Across the narrow canal was a bare field.
The convent wall bounded the view on the left hand.

Sarrion rode up to the gate and rang a bell, which clanged with a sort of
surreptitiousness just within. He only rang once, and then waited,
posting himself immediately opposite a little grating let into the solid
wood of the door. The window behind the grating seemed to open and shut
without sound, for he heard nothing until a woman's voice asked who was
there.

"It is the Count Ramon de Sarrion who must without fail speak to the
Sister Superior to-night," he answered, and composed himself again in the
saddle with a southern patience. He waited a long time before the heavy
doors were at length opened. The horse passed timorously within, with
jerking ears and a distended nostril, looking from side to side. He
glanced curiously at the shadowy forms of two women who held the door,
and leant their whole weight against it to close it again as soon as
possible.

Sarrion dismounted, and drew the bridle through a ring and hook attached
to the wall just inside the gates. No one spoke. The two nuns noiselessly
replaced the heavy bolts. There was a muffled clank of large keys, and
they led the way towards the house.

Just over the threshold was the small room where visitors were asked to
wait--a square, bare apartment with one window set high in the wall, with
one lamp burning dimly on the table now. There were three or four chairs,
and that was all. The bare walls were whitewashed. The Convent School of
the Sisters of the True Faith did not err, at all events, in the heathen
indiscretion of a too free hospitality. The visitors to this room were
barely beneath the roof. The door had in one of its panels the usual
grating and shutter.

Sarrion sat down without looking round him, in the manner of a man who
knew his surroundings, and took no interest in them.

In a few minutes the door opened noiselessly--there was a too obtrusive
noiselessness within these walls--and a nun came in. She was tall, and
within the shadow of her cap her eyes loomed darkly. She closed the door,
and, throwing back her veil, came forward. She leant towards Sarrion, and
kissed him, and her face, coming within the radius of the lamp, was the
face of a Sarrion.

There was in her action, in the movement of her high-held head, a sudden
and startlin