Such were the brave thoughts with which I passed that night, but at ten o'clock next morning, when I was summoned to meet my father himself, it was on trembling limbs and with a quivering heart that I went down to the Reverend Mother's room.
Except that his hair was whiter than before my father was not much changed. He rose as I entered, saying, "Here she is herself," and when I went up to him he put his hands on my shoulders and looked into my face.
"Quite a little Italian woman grown! Like your mother though," he said, and then speaking over my head to the Bishop, who sat on the other side of the room, he added:
"Guess this will do, Bishop, eh?"
"Perfectly," said the Bishop.
I was colouring in confusion at the continued scrutiny, with a feeling of being looked over for some unexplained purpose, when the Reverend Mother called me, and turning to go to her I saw, by the look of pain on her face that she, too, had been hurt by it.
She put me to sit on a stool by the side of her chair, and taking my right hand she laid it in her lap and held it there during the whole of the interview.
The Bishop, whom I had never seen before, was the first to speak. He was a type of the fashionable ecclesiastic, suave, smiling, faultlessly dressed in silk soutane and silver buckled shoes, and wearing a heavy gold chain with a jewelled cross.
"Reverend Mother," he said, "you would gather from Mr. O'Neill's letter that he wishes to remove his daughter immediately—I presume there will be no difficulty in his doing so?"
The Reverend Mother did not speak, but I think she must have bent her head.