“Where there’s so much smoke there’s some bit of fire,” said the older woman. “Where is O’Daly?” The girl shrugged her shoulders.
“’T is not my affair!” she said, curtly. “I know where he’d be, if I’d my will.”
“Katie,” chanted the nun, in tender reproof, “what spirit d’ye call that for a woman who’s within four-an’-twinty hours of making her profession! Pray for yourself, child, that these worldly feelings may be taken from ye!”
“Mother Agnes,” said the girl, “if I’m to pretind to love Cormac O’Daly, thin, wance for all, ’t is no use!”
“We’re bidden to love all thim that despite—” The nun broke off her quotation abruptly. A low wailing sound from the bowels of the earth beneath them rose through the flags of the floor, and filled the chamber with a wierd and ghostly dying away echo. Mother Agnes sprang to her feet.
“’T is the Hostage again!” she cried. “Sister Ellen vowed to me she heard him through the night. Did you hear him just now?”
“I heard it,” said Kate, simply.
The mother superior, upon reflection, seated herself again.
“’T is a strange business,” she said, at last. Her shrewd eyes, wandering in a meditative gaze about the chamber, avoided Katie’s face. “’T is twelve years since last we heard him,” she mused aloud, “and that was the night of the storm. ’T is a sign of misfortune to hear him, they say—and the blowing down of the walls that toime was taken be us to fulfill that same. But sure, within the week, The O’Mahoney had gone on his thravels, and pious Cormac O’Daly had taken his place, and the convint prospered more than ever. At laste that was no misfortune.”
“Hark to me, Mother Agnes,” said Kate, with emphasis. “You never used to favor the O’Mahonys as well I remimber, but you’re a fair-minded woman and a holy woman, and I challenge ye now to tell me honest: Wasn’t anny wan hair on The O’Mahony’s head worth the whole carcase of Cormac O’Daly? ’T was an evil day for Muirisc whin he sailed away. If the convint has prospered, me word, ’t is what nothing else in Muirisc has done. And laving aside your office as a nun, is it sp’akin well for a place to say that three old women in it are better off, and all the rist have suffered?”