Before they could speak, Bernard, with a mystified glance at the spluttering old lady, had taken up the subject of their frightened thoughts.
“But what I came for,” he said, looking from one to the other, “what I was specially in a stew about, was to get here before—before Miss Kate had taken her vows. The ceremony was set down for to-day, as I understand. Perhaps I’m wrong; but that’s why I asked if I was in time.”
“You are in time,” answered Mother Agnes, solemnly.
Her sepulchral tone jarred upon the young man’s ear. Looking into the speaker’s pallid, vail-framed face, he was troubled vaguely by a strange, almost sinister significance in her glance.
“You’re in fine time,” the mother superior repeated, and bowed her head.
“Man alive!” Mrs. Fergus exclaimed, rising and leaning toward him. “You’ve no sinse of what you’re saying. Me daughter’s gone, too!”
“‘Gone!’ How gone? What do you mean?” Bernard gazed in blank astonishment into the vacuous face of Mrs. Fergus. Mechanically he strode toward her and took her hand firmly in his.
“Where has she gone to?” he demanded, as his scattered wits came under control again. “Do you mean that she’s run away? Can’t you speak?”
Mrs. Fergus, thus stoutly adjured, began to whimper:
“They sint her from here—’t was always harsh they were wid her—ye heard Sister Blanaid yerself say they sint her—an’ out she wint to walk under the cliffs—some byes of Peggy Clancy saw her go—an’ she never came back through the long night—an’ me wid no wink o’ sleep—an’ me nerves that bad!”