and simple, and needed no planning. To attempt to follow the
yacht would be useless. To wait anywhere for Walkirk would be equally
so. He would be more apt to find me at my home than anywhere else. It
was his business to find me, and there was no doubt that he would do it.
I did not like to defer my intended interview with Mrs. Raynor, but it
could not be helped. And as for Sylvia, if she had resolved to return to
the House of Martha, the best place for me was the neighborhood of that
institution.

XXXVI.

IN THE SHADE OF THE OAK.

I found my home at Arden very empty and dreary. The servants did not
expect me, my grandmother had not returned, and the absence of Walkirk
added much to my dissatisfaction with the premises.

I was never a man who could sit down and wait for things to happen, and
I felt now that it was absolutely necessary that I should do something,
that I should talk to somebody; and accordingly, on the morning after my
arrival, I determined to walk over to the House of Martha and talk to
Mother Anastasia. For a man to consult with the Mother Superior of a
religious institution about his love affairs was certainly an uncommon
proceeding, with very prominent features of inappropriateness; but this
did not deter me, for, apart from the fact that there was no one else to
talk to, I considered that Mother Anastasia owed me some advice and
explanation, and without hesitation I went to ask for it.

When I reached the House of Martha, and made known my desire to speak to
the head of the institution, I was ushered into a room which was barer
and harder than I had supposed, from Walkirk's description of it. It did
not even contain the religious pictures or the crucifixes which would
have relieved the blankness of the walls in a Roman Catholic
establishment of the kind.

As I stood gazing about me, with a feeling of indignation that such a
place as this should ever have been the home of such a woman as Sylvia,
a door opened, and Mother Anastasia entered.

Her appearance shocked me. I had in my mind the figure of a woman with
whom I had talked,--a woman glowing with the warmth of a rich beauty,
draped in graceful folds of white, with a broad hat shadowing her face,
and a bunch of wild flowers in her belt. Here was a tall woman clothed
in solemn gray, her face pale, her eyes fixed upon the ground; but it
was Mother Anastasia; it was the woman who had talked to me of Sylvia,
who had promised to help me