All had passed.
Nay! Not all? Another comes! Surely, another comes?
Sister Abigail, lifting the lantern, rose up noisily.
"What wait you for, Sister Antony? The holy Ladies have by now entered their cells."
Mary Antony lifted startled eyes.
The golden bars of sunlight fell across an empty cloister.
A few white figures in the passage, seen in the distance through the open door, were vanishing, one by one, into their cells.
Mary Antony covered her dismay with indignation.
"Be off, thou impudent hussy! Hold thy noisy tongue and hang thy rattling lantern on a nail; or, better still, hold thy lantern, and hang thyself, holding it, upon the nail. If I am piously minded to pray here until sunset, that is no concern of thine. Be off, I say!"
Left alone, Mary Antony slowly opened her right hand, and peered into the palm.