She sat back against the garden bench, resting sidewise so that her arm lay across its back; her head drooped forward on her shoulder, waiting quiescent for Miss Braithwaite to come to fetch her away.
Father Morley waited with her, but he did not speak to her. He paced the grass slowly, his open breviary in his hand, his lips moving as he read each syllable of the sonorous Latin, not slighting it, but dwelling on its beauties, now that he had time to read it leisurely.
Cicely lightly dozed as she waited, falling into the half-submerged, half-conscious sleep of a sick person; she was spent with excess of emotion.
She did not have long to wait, however. Miss Braithwaite evidently was accustomed to sudden summons from Father Morley, and to responding to them without demur, nor question as to what he asked of her. She told Cis later that “when it came to a call from Father Morley she was always prepared for the worst.”
Now she stopped her coupé at the gate beyond the schoolyard’s high wall which shut the road from view. Cis did not arouse to hear her, but Father Morley heard the soft purr of her engine; its cessation and the slight jar of her brake; shifted a ribbon in his breviary to mark the place at which he stopped reading, closed his book and went toward the gate to welcome his adjutant.
“Lost, strayed or stolen?” Miss Braithwaite thus asked of the Jesuit a statement of the present case upon which he had called her.
“Neither—yet. Liable to stray, and finally to be lost. Badly strained by a contest in which she is neither victor nor vanquished, so far. You’re to take her home and arm her anew, as well as to treat her wounds; hospital case. Interesting and valuable material,” murmured the priest, turning back toward Cicely.
She aroused at the sound of their voices. Miss Braithwaite had nodded comprehendingly to Father Morley’s summing up, and had said aloud:
“I nearly ran over a child coming here! Little sinner ran directly before my wheels after he had almost reached the curbstone, and I had made sure that I might safely go ahead! I do wish, even if people don’t highly value their children, that they would keep them out of the road. It’s most unpleasant to run one down! This bold buccaneer was about three years old, I fancy.”
Cicely sat up and dropped her hands into her lap, staring at Miss Braithwaite. She saw a small person who, at first glimpse, gave the impression of being topped by a head out of proportion to her height, but this was due to the remarkable cast of her countenance, not to the fact. She had a broad, noble brow; keen, dark eyes, deep-set and not large, but so alive, so flashing and penetrating that they held anyone’s attention who saw them for the first time. Her nose was well-cut, somewhat large, thin, with a high arch, and her lips were strongly defined, the upper one meeting the lower one in a central point. It was the mouth of a person not unsweet, but not given to what might be called professional sweetness; her chin was square-cut, and it lifted in a decided way as she talked. Her voice penetrated Cicely’s consciousness before she fully saw her, a voice of the highest cultivation, used without the least taint of affectation; neither low nor high, with pleasant, throaty notes, yet with a resonance that made it insistent, even at a distance. She spoke every syllable clearly; beautiful English pronunciation, with inflections suggestive of Italian, speech so delightful that, though Cis was in no condition to get pleasure from it, it did enter her tired brain soothingly, and it drew her to the woman who was coming toward her with a friendly smile and a penetrating look.