"I daresay it's as much as my place is worth, but I'm bound to say it."
Still I said nothing, yet she went on:
"His Lordship and Madame have also arrived. . . . They came back half an
hour ago. And just now . . . I saw his lordship . . . coming out of
Madame's room."
"Go away, woman, go away," I cried in the fierce agony of my shame, and
she went out at last, closing the door noisily behind her.
* * * * *
We did not go next day to Benediction at the Reverend Mother's church.
But late the same night, when it was quite dark, I crept out of my room
into the noisy streets, hardly knowing where my footsteps were leading
me, until I found myself in the piazza of the Convent of the Sacred
Heart.
It was quiet enough there. Only the Carabinieri were walking on the
paved way with measured steps, and the bell of the Dominican monastery
was slowly ringing under the silent stars. I could see the light on the
Pope's loggia at the Vatican and hear the clock of St. Peter's striking
nine.
There were lights in the windows of some of the dormitories also, and by
that I knew that the younger children, the children of the Infant Jesus,
were going to bed. There was a light too, in the large window of the
church, and that told me that the bigger girls were saying their night
prayers.
Creeping close to the convent wall I heard the girls' voices rising and
falling, and then through the closed door of the church came the muffled
sound of their evening hymn--
"_Ave maris stella
Dei Mater Alma--_"
I did not know why I was putting myself wilfully to this bitter
pain--the pain of remembering the happy years in which I myself was a
girl singing so, and then telling myself that other girls were there now
who knew nothing of me.
I thought of the Reverend Mother, and then of my own mother, my saint,
my angel, who had told me to think of her when I sang that hymn; and
then I remembered where I was and what had happened to me.
"_Virgin of all virgins,
To thy shelter take me_."
I felt like an outcast. A stifling sensation came into my throat and I
dropped to my knees in the darkness. I thought I was broken-hearted.