“Nearly always,” replied Féraz—“Sometimes he talks of birds and flowers,—sometimes he takes a childish delight in the sunlight—he is most happy, I think, when I take him alone into the chapel and play to him on the organ. He is very peaceful, and never at any time violent.”
“And,” pursued Strathlea, hesitatingly, “who is, or who was the Lilith he speaks of?”
“A woman he loved”—answered Féraz quietly—“and whom he loves still. She lives—for him—in Heaven.”
No more questions were asked, and in another minute they arrived at the open door of the little chapel, where Sir Frederick and Lady Vaughan, attracted by the sound of music, were already awaiting them. Irene briefly whispered a hurried explanation of El-Râmi’s condition, and Lady Vaughan declared she would go and see him after the vesper-service was over.
“You must not expect the usual sort of vespers”—said Féraz then—“Our form is not the Roman Catholic.”
“Is it not?” queried Strathlea, surprised—“Then, may one ask what is it?”
“Our own,”—was the brief response.
Three or four white-cowled, white-garmented figures now began to glide into the chapel by a side-entrance, and Sir Frederick Vaughan asked with some curiosity:
“Which is the Superior?”
“We have no Superior”—replied Féraz—“There is one Master of all the Brotherhoods, but he has no fixed habitation, and he is not at present in Europe. He visits the different branches of our Fraternity at different intervals,—but he has not been here since my brother and I came. In this house we are a sort of small Republic,—each man governs himself, and we are all in perfect unity, as we all implicitly follow the same fixed rules. Will you go into the chapel now? I must leave you, as I have to sing the chorale.”