"Mother!—--"
Then she paused, pressed both palms quickly to her temples, and turned her eyes in bewildered appeal towards the Mother Superior. But she did not fall. With a cry that might have come from the heart of the boundless pity the Mother Superior broke away from the restraining arms of the nuns and rushed forward and caught her to her bosom.
IX.
The day had come when Gordon was well enough to go home. As he sat giving directions to Ezra, who was awkwardly packing his valise, he looked over the books, papers, and letters that lay on the table near the bed.
"There is one letter missing," he said, with a troubled expression, as he finished his search. Then he added quickly, in a tone of helpless entreaty—
"You couldn't have taken it to the station and mailed it with the others, could you, Ezra? It was not to go to the station. It was to have gone to the convent."
The last sentence he uttered rather to his own thought than for the ear of his listener.
"I took it to the convent," said Ezra, stoutly raising himself from over the valise in the middle of the floor. "I didn't take it to the station!"
Gordon wheeled on him, giving a wrench to his wound which may have caused the groan that burst from him, and left him white and trembling.