"Your friend is a nun? At the Convent here? How did you come across her?"
"She called to see the Bishop's son—while I was with him. It seems that, judging by the poor dear boy's religious manuals and medals, and other High Church contraptions, the Matron had got him on the Hospital books as a Roman Catholic. And, consequently, when my friend looked in to visit a day-scholar who was to be operated on for adenoids—I've no idea what they are, but a thing with a name like that would naturally have to be cut out of one—she was told of this poor fellow, and has shed the light of her countenance on him occasionally since. Yesterday was one of the occasions, and Heavens! what a countenance it is even now! What a voice, what eyes, what a manner! I believed I gushed a bit.... She met me as though we'd only parted last week. Nuns are wonderful creatures: she's unique, even as a nun."
He said: "I believe I had the honour of meeting the lady of whom you speak when I called at the Convent yesterday afternoon. A remarkable, noble, and most interesting personality."
Lady Hannah nodded. "All that. But you ought to have seen her at eighteen. We were at the High-School, Kensington, together, I a brat of ten in the Juniors' Division, she a Head Girl, cramming for Girton. She carried everything before her there, and emerged with a B.A. Degree Certificate in the days when it was thought hardly proper for a woman to go about with such a thing tacked to her skirts. And all the students idolised her, and the male lecturers worshipped the ground she trod. And when she was presented—what a sensation! They called her the 'Irish Rose,' and 'Deirdre,' for her skin of cream and her grey eyes and billowing clouds of black hair. Society raved of her for three seasons, until the fools went even madder about that little Hawting woman—a stiff starched martinet's frisky half—who bolted with the man my glorious Biddy had given her beautiful hand to. And the result! She—who might have married an Ambassador and queened it in Petersburg with the best of 'em—she's in a whitewashed Convent, superintending the education of Dutch and Afrikander schoolgirls in Greek, Latin, French, Algebra and Mathematics, calisthenics, needlework, the torture of the piano, and the twiddle of the globes. He has something to answer for, that old crony of yours!"
Lady Hannah stopped for breath, giving the listener his opportunity.
"My dear lady, you have told me a great deal without enlightening me in the least. Who is my 'crony,' and who was your friend?"
Lady Hannah opened her round beady eyes in astonishment.
"Haven't I told you? She is—or was—Lady Bridget-Mary Bawne, sister of that high-falutin' little donkey the present Earl of Castleclare, who came into the title and married at eighteen. His wife has means, I understand. The old Dowager Duchess of Strome, a bosom friend of my mother's, was Biddy's aunt, and Cardinal Voisey, handsome being! is an uncle on the distaff side. All the Catholic world and his wife were at her taking of the veil of profession nineteen years ago. The Pope's Nuncio, the Cardinal-Bishop of Mozella, officiated, and the Comtesse de Lutetia was there with the Duc d'O.... They didn't cut off her beautiful black hair, though we outsiders were on tiptoe to see the thing done. I don't think I ever cried so much in my life. Had hysterics—real—when I got home, and mother scolded fearfully. The Duke of C—— came with his equerry, and after the cloister-gates had shut—crash—on beautiful Biddy in her bridal laces, and white satin, and ropes of pearls, and we were all waiting, breathless, for her to come back in the habit, I heard the Duke say, not that the dear old thing ever meant to be profane: 'By God! General, I'm damned if Captain Mildare hasn't made Heaven an uncommonly handsome present!' And the man he said that to was the husband of the very woman Dicky had run away with not quite twelve months before. Mercy on us!"
"Good Heavens!" the listener had cried and started to his feet, the dark blood rushing to his forehead. The ivory-pale, mutely-suffering face against the background of whitewashed wall flashed back upon his memory, in a circle of dazzling light. He saw her again, leaning against the door of the chapel as he told her the cruel news. He heard her saying:
"Are you at liberty to tell me the date of Captain Mildare's death? For I know—one who was also his friend—and would take an interest in the particulars."