Waiting in the small room, with its carefully-closed window, and the big writing-table stacked with papers, and a great crucifix standing upright in the midst of them, she began for the first time to speculate as to the reason of her summons.
It occurred to her, with a slight sense of shock, that such a summons, in the case of nun or novice, had very often been the prelude to an announcement of bad news, such as the death of a relative at home.
Hastily she pulled out Barbara's letter and glanced through it.
There was no hint of approaching disaster in the rather set little phrases, and the four small sheets were mostly concerned with the fact that Barbara was finding it necessary to move into a still smaller house than the one that she and Ralph had taken at Hampstead after their improvident marriage.
Pamela was at Clevedon Square with Cedric and his wife. She was going to heaps of parties, and every one thought her very pretty and amusing.
There was no mention of Archie, and Alex hastily ransacked her memory as to his whereabouts.
Since the first year of her novitiate in London she had never seen her youngest brother, and although she felt a fleeting sorrow at the thought of harm having befallen him, her tenderness was for the little, curly-haired boy in a sailor suit with whom she had played and quarrelled in the Clevedon Square nursery, and not for the unknown youth of later years.
As she speculated, the well-known tread of the Assistant Superior sounded down the corridors—a hasty, decisive footstep. Alex sprang to her feet as the door opened.
"Oh, what is it?" she cried, at the first sight of the Superior's face.
The strong, lined countenance, suffused with agitation, bore every mark of violent disturbance.