Nina looked wholly bewildered.
“You know I told you she was in the chapel, yesterday, when the bell was ringing, because there’d been a little alteration,” pursued Mrs. Mulholland earnestly. “It’s better not to have any talk about these things. People don’t always quite understand—outside people, you know—they think it sounds like irregularity. One doesn’t want to give occasion for that sort of talk, you know. You don’t mind my telling you, Mrs. Severing? I know you’re new to our convent ways. Not a Catholic, are you?”
“No.”
“Not a Catholic,” assented Mrs. Mulholland with unabated cheerfulness. “Well, well, well. You must let me say a little prayer for you now and then. Now I’m going to give you a special intention in my Office.”
She gave the paralyzed Mrs. Severing a couple of friendly little taps on the shoulder, and hurried away, opening her large black book of devotions as she went, and Nina, still rooted to the spot, presently saw her from the window, a large, unwieldy figure, pounding steadily round and round the small garden, her black skirts pinned up over a black stuff petticoat, her spectacled gaze fixed upon her manual, and her lips moving rapidly.
“Oh, here you are!” said Frances, entering the parlour to find Mrs. Severing fixedly contemplating this spectacle from the window.
“I was brought here by the Mulholland woman,” said Nina bitterly. “There seems to be no escaping her. Does she run the whole convent, may I ask?”
Frances wisely declined to become controversial on the point. “I think she means to be very kind to us.”
“I must say, I can’t help being very much amused,” said Nina in infuriated accents, “at the absurd tone of patronage she adopts towards me. It really makes me laugh.”
Laughter was not the predominant emotion discernible in Mrs. Severing’s voice, but Frances was in a state of spiritual exaltation that rendered her completely oblivious of outward impressions.