“Mass? Here?” said the girl, in the same sharp whisper; and her sobbing ceased abruptly.
“Yes, dear; if he is able to stand and use his hands enough. They have settled it upstairs.”
Isabel continued to look up in her face wildly.
“Ah!” said the old nun again. “You must not look like that. Remember that he thinks those wounds the most precious things in the world—yes—and his mother too!”
“I must be at mass,” said Isabel; “God means it.”
“Now, now,” said Mistress Margaret soothingly, “you do not know what you are saying.”
“I mean it,” said Isabel, with sharp emphasis; “God means it.”
Mistress Margaret took the girl’s face between her hands, and looked steadily down into her wet eyes. Isabel returned the look as steadily.
“Yes, yes,” she said, “as God sees us.”
Then she broke into talk, at first broken and incoherent in language, but definite and orderly in ideas, and in her interpretations of these last months.