t wish to question the man
about Bessie. I would rely upon the beaming portress, whose "_Sure_"
was such an earnest of her good-will. Moreover, a feeling of contempt,
growing out of pity, was taking possession of me. This man, in what
did he differ from the Catholic priest save in the utter selfishness
of his creed? Beside the sordid accumulation of gain to which his life
was devoted the priest's mission among crowded alleys and
fever-stricken lanes seemed luminous and grand. A moral suicide, with
no redeeming feature. The barns bursting with fatness, the comfortable
houses, gain added to gain--to what end? I was beginning to give very
short answers indeed to his questions, and was already meditating a
foray through the rest of the house, when the door opened slowly and a
lady-abbess entered. She was stiff and stately, with the most formal
neckerchief folded precisely over her straitened bust, a clear-muslin
cap concealing her hair, and her face, stony, blue-eyed and cold--a
pale, frozen woman standing stately there.

"Bessie Stewart?" said I. "She is here--I know it. Do not detain her.
I must see her. Why all this delay?"

"Dost thou mean Sister Eliza?" she asked in chilling tones.

"No, nobody's sister--least of all a sister here--but the young lady
who came over here from Lenox two months ago--Bessie Stewart, Mrs.
Sloman's niece." (I knew that Mrs. Sloman was quite familiar with some
of the Shakeresses, and visited them at times.)

Very composedly the sister took a chair and folded her hands across
her outspread handkerchief before she spoke again. I noticed at this
moment that her dress was just the color of her eyes, a pale, stony
blue.

"Sister Eliza: it is the same," in measured accents. "She is not here:
she has gone--to Watervliet."

Can this be treachery? I thought, and is she still in the house? Will
they hide from her that I am here? But there was no fathoming the
woman's cold blue eyes.

"To Watervliet?" I inquired dismally. "How? when? how did she go?"

"She went in one of our wagons: Sister Leah and Brother Ephraim went
along."

"When will they return?"

"I cannot say."

All this time the man was leaning back against the wall, but uttered
not a word. A glance of triumph shot from the sister's eyes as I rose.
But she was mistaken if she thought I was going away. I stepped to the
window, and throwing it open called to Hiram, who was still sitting in
his wagon, chewing composedly a bit of stra