There was a pause in the music, and a faint sound or two as of uncertain applause. Rosamund saw Miss Blandflower begin to clap her hands enthusiastically, then turn doubtful eyes on Mrs. Severing, who had not moved, and begin to fumble with her gloves as though she had never meant to do anything else. The plaintive, poignant strains of the violin began again.
Rosamund suddenly felt that she dared not look at Frances, for fear of seeing in her face some mysterious confirmation of her own thoughts.
For a little while she argued with herself. It was absurd to jump at conclusions. Frances had never spoken, or given any hint, of wishing to become a nun. And even supposing she were infatuated with the idea for a time, her guardian would be the last person to encourage such a step. It would all be stopped and forbidden, and Frances would never be wilfully disobedient.
Such a thing could not happen—no one entered a convent nowadays. It was in medieval times that girls of one’s own class became nuns—not nowadays. A convent had been a refuge from the world, then. Involuntarily Rosamund wondered whether it would not present itself in exactly that light to Frances, now. “But she’s not going to—she can’t. Why, it would mean shutting herself up away from me—for the whole of her life,” thought Rosamund wildly.
She tried to look at it reasonably, to tell herself that this full-grown certainty which had suddenly sprung into being within her, was without any foundation in fact. She reminded herself of Cousin Bertie’s favourite advice, not to cross bridges before they were reached. But Rosamund happened to possess that fundamental form of sincerity which cannot blind itself to its own inner vision, and not all the wisdom of common sense and of Cousin Bertie’s optimistic philosophy, weighed against that one unreasoning flash of intuition.
A sudden craving for reassurance seized her uncontrollably.
She looked at Frances.
The last notes of the violin died away, and this time everyone broke into applause at once, and Miss Blandflower was able to clap fearlessly and noisily with the others.
Under cover of it all Rosamund leant towards her sister.
“Francie,” she said urgently, “you wouldn’t ever want to be a nun, would you? Promise me you wouldn’t.”