She wore a garb half-secular, half-religious. Her black serge dress betrayed no attention to fashion, scarcely even to neatness; her beautiful hair was all put back under a white linen veil, and her whole appearance showed that last bitter change in a woman's nature, when she ceases to have a woman's instinctive personal pride. Olive saw not her face, except the cheek's outline, worn to the straightness of age. Nor did Christal observe Olive until she had approached quite close.
Then she gave a wild start, the old angry flush mounted to her temples, and sank.
“Why did you come here?” she said hoarsely; “I sent you word I wished to see no one—that I was utterly dead to the world.”
“But not to me—oh, not to me, my sister!”
“Sister!” she repeated, with flashing eyes, and then crossed herself humbly, muttering, “The evil spirit must not rise again. Help me, Blessed Mother—good saints, help me!”
She told her rosary over once, twice, and then turned to Olive, subdued.
“Now say what you have to say to me. I told you I had no anger in my heart—I even asked your forgiveness. I only desire to be left alone—to spend the rest of my bitter life in penance and prayer.”
“But I cannot leave you, my sister.”
“I wish you would not call me so, nor take my hand, nor look at me as you do now—as you did the first night I saw you, and again on that awful, awful day!” And Christal sank back on one of the little beds—the thornless pillow where some happy child slept—and there sobbed bitterly.
More than once she motioned Olive away, but Olive would not go. “Do not send me away! If you knew how I suffer daily from the thought of you!”