Monsieur repeated his story, this time with further details, for Sister Gudule questioned him closely. She would have every particular. The tears streamed down her cheeks, hung upon her bristly moustache. She was deeply distressed.
"You don't know how I loved that child," she said, excusing herself to the Superior; and then to Heathcote, "Ah, Monsieur, you could never understand how I loved her. I saved her life. From the weakest frailest creature, I made her a sound and healthy child. Indeed, I may say that I did much more than this. With the help of God and the intercession of His Saints I saved her mind."
"It is quite true," said the Reverend Mother. "The child came to us under most peculiar circumstances. Sister Gudule took entire charge of her for the first year."
"And she rewarded me tenfold for my trouble," added Gudule; "she gave me love for love, measure for measure."
"Will you tell me all about her—every detail? The knowledge may help me to avenge her death," said Heathcote eagerly. "It is my belief, and the belief of others, that she was foully murdered."
He was intensely agitated. He felt as if he had taken into his hand the lever which worked some formidable machine—an instrument of death and doom, and that every movement of his hand might bring destruction. Yet the process once begun must go on. He was no longer an individual, working of his own free will; he was only an agent in the hands of Fate.
"Willingly, we will tell you all we can," said the Reverend Mother. "But you must allow us to offer you a little coffee. You have travelled, and you look white and weary."
The convent was proud of its coffee, almost the only refreshment ever offered to visitors. The portress brought a little oval tray covered with a snow-white napkin, a little brown crockery pot, a white cup and saucer, all of the humblest, but spotlessly clean.
"Léonie was with us eight years," said the Reverend Mother, while Sister Gudule dried her eyes and tried to regain her composure. "She was just ten years old when she was brought to us by her grandmother, a person who had been at one time a dressmaker in one of the most fashionable quarters of Paris, but who had fallen upon evil days, and lived in a very humble way in a small lodging on the left bank of the Seine. Léonie was an orphan, the daughter of Madame Lemarque's only son, who had died young, broken-hearted at the death of his young wife. The child was brought to us by a priest, who came all the way from Paris with his little charge. She had but just recovered from a long illness, which was said to be brain-fever, caused by a very terrible mental shock which she had endured two months before."
"Were you told the nature of that shock?"