She will be so tired to-morrow. Dearest,
you know you will."

She took the Mother's hand, confidently, caressingly. The end of the thin
black veil, that was shabby now, and had darns in many places, was wafted
across her face by a vagrant puff of cooled air from the river, and she
kissed it, bringing the tears very near the deep, sad eyes that looked at
her, and then turned away. Saxham, in default of any excuse for lingering
near her, went back to Lady Hannah, who had been diligently mining in him
with the pick and shovel of Our Special Correspondent, and getting nothing
out, and sat himself doggedly upon a stone beside her.

"That is a sweet girl." She nibbled bannock, sparsely margarined, and
sipped her sugarless, milkless tea, sitting on a little bushy knoll,
warranted free from puff-adders and tarantulas. Saxham answered stiffly:

"Many people here seem to be under--the same impression."

"Don't you share it? Don't you think her sweet?"

"I have seen young ladies who were--less deserving of the adjective."

Lady Hannah jangled a triumphant laugh. She wore the tailored garb the
average Englishwoman looks best in, at home and abroad, an alpaca coat
and skirt of cool grey; what the American belle terms a "shirt-waist" with
pearl studs, and a big grey hat with a voluminous blue silk veil. Her
small face was smaller than ever, but her eyes were as round and as bright
as a mouse's or a bird's, and her talk was full of glitter and vivacity.

"'Praise from Dr. Saxham.' ... If I were a man," she declared, "I should
_perdre la boule_ over that girl. I don't wonder where she gets her lovely
manners from, with such a model of grace and good breeding as Biddy Bawne
before her eyes, but I do ask how she came by that type of beauty? And
Biddy----"

"Biddy?" repeated Saxham, at a loss.

Her laugh shrilled out.

"I forgot. She is the Reverend Mother-Superior of the Convent to all of
you. But I was at school with her, and I can't forget she used to be
Biddy. She was one of the great girls, and I was a sprat of ten, but she
condescended to let me adore her, and I did, like everybody else. To be
adored is her _metier_. The Sisters swear by her, and that girl worships
the ground under her feet. If I had a daughter I should like her to look
at me in that way--heart in her eyes, don't you know, and what eyes!
Topaz-coloured, aren't they? She has no conversation, of course. _I_
hadn't at her age--nineteen or twenty, if I am any