Mrs. Mulholland paused with evident enjoyment outside the green baize door leading to the chapel, gathered her ample black skirts tightly round her with one hand, and advanced with elaborate creakings, on the tips of her toes, leaving the swing-door open behind her.
Frances and Nina both gazed into the pretty softly-lighted chapel, with the low carven stalls where knelt an occasional black-robed figure. Rows of light oak benches occupied the back half of the little church, and were evidently destined for the occupation of visitors to the convent.
Mrs. Mulholland, on the threshold, startled them both by wheeling abruptly round and proffering a liberally-splashed finger from the marble shell containing holy water at the door.
Neither Nina nor Frances had presence of mind to avail themselves of the opportunity thus suddenly thrust upon them, and Mrs. Mulholland, erecting her eyebrows with an expression of regret, resumed her cautious progress in the direction of a devoutly-bent form kneeling in the first stall.
As she sank heavily on her knees on to the floor and began a rapid and hoarsely whispered conversation, which the black veil punctuated by an occasional inclination, Nina murmured hastily to Frances:
“Come upstairs again before she gets out. I can’t stand any more of this!”
They fled noiselessly.
“Well!” said Nina in the sanctuary of her own room, which now appeared to her as a veritable haven of refuge, “if this is what they call the peace of convent life....”
“It will be silence after to-morrow,” said Frances consolingly.
“I long for it,” murmured Mrs. Severing, who had never before made the aspiration with such perfect sincerity.