nothing about painful
things--never mentioning my marriage, or what had happened since she saw
me last.

Her talk was generally about our old school and my old schoolfellows,
many of whom came to the convent for her "retreats," which were under
the spiritual direction of one of the Pope's domestic prelates.

Sometimes she would laugh about our Mother of the Novices who had
"become old and naggledy"; sometimes about the little fat Maestro of the
Pope's choir who had cried when I first sang the hymn to the Virgin,
("Go on, little angel,"); and sometimes about the two old lay sisters
(now quite toothless) who still said I might have been a "wonderful
washerwoman" if I had "put my mind to it."

I hate to think that my dear Reverend Mother was doing this consciously
in order to break down my defences, but the effect was the same. Little
by little, during the few days she was with me, she bridged the space
back to my happy girlhood, for insensibly I found myself stirred by the
emotions of the convent, and breathing again the air of my beloved Rome.

On the afternoon of the fourth day of her visit I was sitting up by her
side in front of my window, which was wide open. It was just such a
peaceful evening as our last one at Nemi. Not a leaf was stirring; not a
breath of wind in the air; the only sounds we heard were the lowing of
the cattle waiting to be milked, the soft murmur of the sea, and the
jolting of a springless cart that was coming up from the shore, laden
with sea wrack.

As the sun began to sink it lit blazing fires in the windows of the
village in front--especially in the window of my mother's room, which
was just visible over the tops of the apple trees in the orchard.

The Reverend Mother talked of Benediction. If she were in Rome she would
be in church singing the _Ora pro nobis_.

"Let us sing it now. Shall we?" she said.

At the next moment her deep majestic contralto, accompanied by my own
thin and quavering soprano, were sending out into the silent air the
holy notes which to me are like the reverberations of eternity:

"Mater purissima
Ora pro nobis.
Mater castissima
Ora pro nobis."

When we had finished I found my hand lying in her lap. Patting it gently
she said:

"Mary, I am leaving you to-morrow."

"So soon?"

"Yes, but I can't go without telling you why I came"--and then her
mission was revealed to me.

She had heard about my marriage and the ruin it had fall