But Easter brought the news that Lady Bridget-Mary had decided upon taking the veil, and begged her father not to oppose her wishes. The Dowager-Duchess rushed to the Kensington Convent.... All the little straw-mats on the slippery floor of the parlour were swept like chaff before the hurricane of her advancing petticoats as she bore down upon the most disappointing, erratic, and self-willed niece that ever brought the grey hairs of a solicitous and devoted aunt in sorrow to the grave, demanding in Heaven's name what Bridget-Mary meant by this maniacal decision? Then she drew back, for at first she hardly credited that this tall, pale, quiet woman in the plain, close-fitting, black woollen gown could be Bridget-Mary at all. Realising that it could be nobody else, she began to cry quite hysterically, subsiding upon a Berlin woolwork covered sofa, while her niece rang the bell for that customary Convent restorative, a teaspoonful of essence of orange-flower in a glass of water, and returning to the side of her agitated relative, took her hand, encased in a tight one-button puce glove, saying:
"Dear Aunt Constantia, what is the use of crying? I have done with it for good."
"You are so dreadfully changed and so awfully composed, and I always was sensitive. And, besides, to find you like this when I expected you to beat your head upon the floor—or was it against the wall, they said?—and pray to be put out of your misery by poison, or revolver, or knife, as though anybody would be wicked enough to do it ..."
A faint stain of colour crept into Lady Bridget-Mary's white cheeks.
"All that is over, Aunt Constantia. Forget it, as I have done, and drink a little of this. The Sisters believe it to be calming to the nerves."
"To naturally calm nerves, I suppose." The Dowager accepted the tumbler. "What a nice, thick, old-fashioned glass!" She sipped. "You hear how my teeth are chattering against the rim. That is because I have flown here in such a hurry of agitation upon hearing from your father that you have decided to enter the Novitiate at once."
"It is true," said Lady Bridget-Mary, standing very tall and dark and straight against the background of the parlour window, that was filled in with ground-glass, and veiled with snowy curtains of starched thread-lace.
"True! When not ten months ago you declared to me that you would not be a nun for all the world.... You begged me to befriend you in the matter of Captain Mildare. I undertook, alas! that office...."
The Dowager-Duchess blew her nose.
"A little more of the orange-flower water, dear aunt?"