CHAPTER IV.
THE OLD MONK.
The ill-looking maid flounced away, thinking resentfully that the pretty young lady was afraid to trust her with her keys, while Dainty, whose only reason had been an unwillingness to expose her simple wardrobe, proceeded to lay out a gown for the evening—a delicately embroidered white cashmere that no one would have suspected had been cleverly made over from her mother's bridal trousseau.
While she was dressing her hair with deft fingers, she was startled by a very unpleasant sound—a series of harsh, hacking coughs—seeming to proceed from the room next her own. She thought:
"Some one is ill in there. What a terribly consumptive cough, poor soul!"
Presently Sheila hurried in with a wealth of roses glistening with the fresh-fallen evening dew, and after thanking her, Dainty asked, curiously:
"Is there some one ill in the next room?"
"Shure, miss, there's nobuddy in the next room at all, at all, and not a sick crathur in the house. Why is it ye thought so?"
"I heard some one coughing in there—a tight, hacking cough, like some one in the last stages of consumption," Dainty answered; and instantly Sheila Kelly crossed herself and looked furtively behind her like one pursued, muttering:
"The saints preserve us! T' ould monk!"
"The old monk, did you say? Who is he?" exclaimed Dainty, sharply; but the maid shook her head.