She had a small bedroom, where her meals were served by the lay-sister who waited on the lady-boarders, and a little prie-dieu was put in a remote corner of the chapel for her use, neither to be confounded with the choir-stalls, nor the benches for visitors, nor the seats reserved for the ladies living in the house. The librarian Sister, in charge of the well-filled book-case of the Community-rooms, had instructions to provide her with literature. Beyond that, her existence remained unrecognized.
She often spent hours doing nothing, gazing from the window at the Corso far below, so curiously instinct with life after the solitude of the Liège grounds, encompassed by high walls on every side.
She did not read very much.
The books they gave her were all designed to one end—that of making her realize that she was turning her back upon the way of salvation. When she thought about it, Alex believed that this was, in truth, what she was doing, but it hardly seemed to matter.
Her room was fireless, and the old-fashioned house, as most Roman ones, had no form of central heating. She shivered and shivered, and in the early days of February fell ill. One abscess after another formed inside her throat, an unspeakably painful manifestation of general weakness.
One evening she was so ill that there was talk of sending for the chaplain—the doctor had never been suggested—but that same night the worst abscess of all broke inside her throat, and Alex saw that there was no hope of her being about to die.
The bright winter cold seemed to change with incredible rapidity into glowing summer heat, and a modicum of well-being gradually returned to her.
She even crept slowly and listlessly about in the shade of the great Borghese gardens, in the comparative freshness of the Pincio height, and wondered piteously at this strange realization of her girlhood's dream of seeing Italy. She never dared to go into the streets alone, nor would the nuns have permitted it.
Her difficult letters to England had been written.
Cedric had replied with courteous brevity, a letter so much what Sir Francis might have written that Alex was almost startled, and her father's man of business had written her a short, kind little note, rejoicing that the world was again to have the benefit of Miss Clare's society after her temporary retirement.