When Lily came out of the bank she suddenly made up her mind that she would drive to the Convalescent Home, and arrange about work there. Something told her that it would be easier to persuade Aunt Cosy to let her do as she wished if the matter were settled.
The place was a good deal further from La Solitude than the chaplain had given her to understand. In fact, it was in France, quite a couple of miles from Monte Carlo proper.
But Lily found that she was eagerly expected by the good-natured, jolly-looking matron. It was arranged provisionally that she should go there three times a week, arriving about ten in the morning. “And we shall always be pleased to give you lunch,” the matron said, smiling into the girl’s pretty, happy face.
After they had left the Convalescent Home and were driving back towards Monaco, Cristina suddenly exclaimed in a pleading voice, “I wonder if Mademoiselle would mind taking me for a moment to the Convent of the White Sisters? It would not delay us more than ten minutes.”
Lily assented, pleased that she could do something to give the old woman pleasure.
In her eagerness, Cristina got up in the open carriage and touched their driver. He looked round, without slackening their breakneck pace.
“The Convent of the White Sisters,” she exclaimed, and the man nodded, and whipped his horses up to go yet faster than they were going.
Up the steep road leading into old Monaco the little carriage rocked and swayed. They swept past the lovely garden of which Lily now had a poignant memory, and then they started going down more slowly a very narrow, quiet street of high stone houses, and finally they drew up opposite a huge closed iron gate.
“Here we are!” exclaimed Cristina in an eager voice—a voice quite unlike her own. “My mother died when I was only five years old,” she whispered, “and I was here a great deal, both as a child and as a young girl. Indeed, this convent was my real home.”