“Nuns are always happy,” said Frances seriously.
“Are they? I wish I knew more about them, and what sort of life they have to lead. I suppose it’s nice and peaceful and holy, if you like that sort of thing. Do you feel as though you had a vocation, or whatever it is, Frances?”
Frances said nothing, only looked at Hazel with large, distressed eyes.
“I’m talking of what I know nothing about,” declared Lady Marleswood, kissing her affectionately. “I won’t bother you about it, but if they worry you at Porthlew, when they know, you can come to us just whenever you like and for as long as you like. Nobody shall say anything to you, and you can go to church all day if you want to.”
“Oh, Hazel, how nice you are!”
“Good-night, Francie darling. Do remember that the only thing is to follow one’s own convictions quite regardless of anything and everyone. I know it sounds dreadful, but look at me! I’m a living example of the advantages of self-will. Now I must go and say good-night to mother.”
Hazel left Frances to the realization that her hitherto unspoken desire had gained the strangest degree of life and substance from the mere facts of having been put into words, and received almost as a matter of course.
“Hazel seemed to think it quite natural, and not at all dreadful,” Frances thought to herself. “Perhaps Cousin Bertie won’t mind as much as I think she’s going to. I know I’m a moral coward, because I’m more afraid of telling her, for fear she should be angry, than of telling Rosamund, who’ll only be dreadfully unhappy. But I needn’t think of it yet. Father Anselm said I was not to think of the future at all, or to make plans....”
She lost herself in surmises, that almost amounted to certainties, as to the interpretation her confessor had put upon her timidly vague references to her own future. That the shrewd little French Superior had penetrated her scarcely apprehended secret, Frances felt hardly any doubt.
“They’ll tell me what to do when the time comes,” she thought with a quickly beating heart, and remembered thankfully her new-found allegiance.