JEAN LEARNS THE TRUTH.
Months—months of a quiet, peaceful, uneventful life—went by, and Jean had become even more popular among the English sisters than she had been in Paris.
Though her life had so entirely changed, and she had naught to worry her, not a thought nor a care beyond her religious duties and her nursing, in which she was now growing proficient, she would sometimes sit and think over her brief married life, and become filled by wonder.
Where was her husband? Where, too, was the low-born thief who had taken her part and prevented the blow upon that never-to-be-forgotten night?
Sometimes when she reflected upon it all she sat horrified. And when she recollected how shamefully she had been deceived by the man she so implicitly trusted and so dearly loved, tears would well in her great, big eyes. Sister Gertrude, one of the nurses, a tall, fair woman, who was her most intimate friend, often noticed the redness of her eyes, and guessed the truth.
Seldom, if ever, Jean went out farther than across Barnes Common or into Richmond Park for exercise, and always accompanied by Sister Gertrude, the latter wearing the black habit of the Sisterhood, while Jean herself was in a distinctive garb as a nurse of the Order of Saint Agnes.
Never once in all those months had she been in London. All she saw of it was the red glare upon the night sky. But she was happy enough. London, and especially the neighbourhood of Regent Street, would remind her too vividly of Ralph and of her dear father.
One spring afternoon, while seated at the open window finishing some needlework destined for a poor family living in a back street off the Hammersmith Broadway, she was chatting merrily with Sister Gertrude. Over their needlework the rules allowed them to chatter, and in that barely-furnished little room she and Sister Gertrude enjoyed many a pleasant gossip.
Outside, the garden was gay with daffodils and hyacinths, and the trees were just bursting into bud, the fresh green rendered the brighter by the warm sunshine.