“Women like you make it heaven or hell for the men who love you.”
“And hell, without the choice of heaven, for ourselves,” returned Magda.
The bitterness in her voice wrung the old woman’s heart. She sighed, then straightened her back defiantly.
“We have to bear the burden of our blunders, my dear.”
There was a reminiscent look in the keen old eyes. Lady Arabella had had her own battles to fight. “And, after all, who should pay the price if not we ourselves?”
“But if the price is outrageous, Marraine? What then?”
“Still you’ve got to pay.”
Magda returned home with those words ringing in her ears. They fitted into the thoughts which had been obsessing her with a curious precision. It was true, then. You had to pay, one way or another. Lady Arabella knew it. Little Suzette had somehow found it out.
That night a note left Friars’ Holm addressed to the Mother Superior of the Sisters of Penitence.