CHAPTER IX.
"What do you mean?" said Hubert, starting in his turn. "The girl gone?"
Sister Agnes was in tears already.
"Let me fetch Sister Louisa or the Reverend Mother to you?" she cried. "They know all about it—as far as anybody can know anything. You—you are one of her friends, perhaps? Oh, the dear child—and we loved her so dearly!"
Hubert was looking pale and stern. He had stopped short on the gravelled pathway, half-way between the chapel and the entrance to the school. The beauty, the interest of the place was lost upon him at once. He cared only to hear what had become of the child whom he had fondly imagined himself to be benefiting. If she had been unhappy, if she had run away into the wide world on account of ill-treatment by her teachers and fellow-pupils, was he not to blame? He ought to have come to the place before and made inquiries, not left her fate to the light words of Mrs. Rumbold or some unknown Sister Louisa. He had made himself responsible for her education; was he not in some sort responsible for her happiness as well?
These questionings made his face look very dark and grave as he stood once more in the visitors' room, awaiting the arrival of the lady whom Sister Agnes had called Sister Louisa, and whose letters to Mrs. Rumbold he remembered that he had read.
He felt himself prejudiced against her before she arrived; but, when he saw her, he was compelled to own that she had a very attractive countenance. The face itself, framed in its setting of white and black, was long and pale, but beautiful by reason of its sweetness of expression; the gray eyes were full of tenderness, yet full of grief. There were marks of tears upon her face—the only one that the visitor had seen that was at all dolorous; and yet, noting her serene brow and gentle lips, Hubert, man of the world as he was, and more ready to cavil and despise than to admire, said to himself that, if any woman could make a young girl love her, surely this woman would not fail!
"You wish," she said, "to ask some questions about our pupil Jane Wood?"
"I do indeed. I am very much surprised to hear that she has left you."
"May I ask whether you have any authority from our friend Mrs. Rumbold to inquire?"