Plainly, Dorothy was no unfaithful messenger when her own comfort only was to be sacrificed. Sister Mary considered a moment; and then said she would see if Cicely could be allowed to have an interview with her visitor. Bidding Dorothy sit down, she left the room.
For quite an hour Dorothy sat waiting, until she began to think the nuns must have forgotten her existence, and to look about for some means of reminding them of it. There were no bells in sitting-rooms at that time, except in the form of a little hand-bell on a table, and for this last Dorothy searched in vain. Then she tried to go out into the passage, in the hope of seeing somebody; but she was terrified to find herself locked in. She did not know what to do. The window was barred with an iron grating; there was no escape that way. Poor Dorothy began to wonder whether, if she found herself a prisoner, she could contrive to climb the chimney, and what would become of her after doing so, when she heard at last the welcome sound of approaching steps, and the key was turned in the lock. The next minute Cissy was in Dorothy’s arms.
“O Dorothy! dear Dorothy! tell me quick—Father—” Cissy could get no further.
“He is at rest, my dear heart, and shall die no more.”
Cissy was not able to answer for the sobs that choked her voice, and Dorothy smoothed her hair and petted her.
“Nay, grieve not thus, sweet heart,” she said.
“Oh no, it is so wicked of me!” sobbed poor Cissy. “I thought I should have been so glad for Father: and I can only think of me and the children. We’ve got no father now!”
“Nay, my dear heart, thou hast as much as ever thou hadst. He is only gone upstairs and left you down. He isn’t dead, little Cissy: he’s alive in a way he never was before, and he shall live for ever and ever.”
Neither Dorothy nor Cissy had noticed that a nun had entered with her, and they were rather startled to hear a voice out of the dark corner by the door.
“Take heed, good woman, how thou learn the child such errors. That is only true of great saints; and the man of whom you speak was a wicked heretic.”