“Oh no, I don’t think so.”
“That’s all right. He’s not nearly good enough for her. We’ll find someone much nicer—a very clever man who writes books or something, I think—and when they’re married you can live with her most of the time, till you marry yourself. Oh, Francie, I can’t help it—I want to see all the people I love married now—it’s so much the nicest thing to be!”
“It depends,” faltered Frances, colouring.
Hazel looked at her with her shrewd, sympathetic gaze. She had that odd degree of intuition that the most frankly self-absorbed natures often display.
“Francie,” she said slowly, “do you want to become a nun?”
Frances coloured helplessly under the unexpected bit of penetration.
“I don’t know—oh, Hazel—what made you think that? I haven’t said one word—not for a long time yet,” she stammered incoherently.
“I’m not exactly surprised,” remarked her cousin calmly. “You were always much too good for this world, darling; but do you think you’d be happy in a convent?”
“Of course I should be happy. But I don’t know if—if they’d even have me. Oh, Hazel, it makes it all seem so much more real when we talk about it like this. I’ve not told anybody at all—not even Rosamund.”
“I won’t tell a soul,” promised Hazel. “I don’t know anything about convents at all, but there are some sisters who call for subscriptions sometimes at Marleswood, and they always look very nice and happy.”