The words were spoken only half aloud, but they were heard by the child cradled in her arms.
“Mother, why christened you me not Eleanor?” she asked dreamily.
“Hush, child, and go to sleep!” answered the mother, startled out of her reverie.
Maude was silent, and Eleanor wrapped her closer in the old cloak which enfolded both of them. But before the woman yielded herself up to the stupor which was benumbing her faculties, she passed her hand into her bosom, and drew out a little flat parcel, folded in linen, which she secreted in the breast of the child’s dress.
“Keep this, Maude,” she said gravely.
“What is it, Mother?” was Maude’s sleepy answer.
“It is what thou shalt find it hereafter,” was the mysterious rejoinder. “But let none take it away, neither beguile thee thereof. ’Tis all I have to give thee.”
Maude seemed too nearly asleep for her curiosity to be roused; and Eleanor, leaning back against the tree, resigned herself to slumber also.
Not long afterwards, a goatherd passing that way in search of a strayed kid, came on the unconscious pair, wrapped in each other’s arms. He ran for help to his hut, and had them conveyed to a convent at a little distance, which the wanderers had failed to find. The rescue was just in time to bring the life back to the numbed limbs of the child. But for the mother there was no waking in this world. Eleanor Gerard had met God.
Four years after that winter evening, in the guest-chamber of the Convent of Sopwell sat a nun of middle age and cheerful look, in conversation with a woman in ordinary costume, but to whom the same description would very nearly apply.