"I shall have finished in another five minutes, and then there will be no more letters to write, my child. Sit where you choose; take a book, and be quiet; I shall not keep you waiting long."
The words were few; the Mother-Superior's manner a little curt in speaking them. But where Lynette chose to sit was on the cheap drugget that covered the beeswaxed boards, with her squirrel-coloured hair and soft cheek pressed against the black serge habit.
The Mother-Superior wrote on, apparently absorbed, and with knitted brows of attention, but her large, white, beautiful left hand dropped half unconsciously to the silken hair and the velvet cheek, and stayed there.
There is a type of woman the lightest touch of whose hand is subtler and more sweet than the most honeyed kisses of others. And the Mother-Superior was not liberal of caresses. When Lynette turned her lips to the hand, the face that bent over the paper remained as stern and as absorbed as ever. She went on writing, directed, closed, and stamped her letter, and set it aside under a pebble of white quartz, lined and streaked with the faint silvery green of gold.
"Now, my child?"
The girl said, flushing scarlet:
"Reverend Mother, I have told the Red Class the truth about me!"
The Mother-Superior started; dismay was in her face.
"Why, child?"
"I—I mean"—the scarlet flush gave place to paleness—"that I have no name and no family, and no friends except you, dearest, and the Sisters. That you found me, and took me in, and have kept me out of charity."