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the lady had escaped from the asylum, and been lost. And now the strange
gentleman came with her portrait and said she was dead.

Poor soul, how well Mrs. Drayton remembered her! And that was thirty
years ago! She had never afterward set eyes on the lady, and never heard
of her but once, and even that once must be five-and-twenty years since.
One day she went for coal to the wharf at Pimlico, and there she met an
old neighbor, who said: "Mrs. Drayton, your lodger, she that drowned
herself, came back for the babby, but your man and you were shifted
away." And to think that the poor young thing was dead and gone now, and
she herself, who had thought she was old even in those days, was alive
and hearty still!

By this time the cab was rattling through the busy streets of London,
and the train of the landlady's thoughts was broken. Only in a vague way
did she know where she was going. The cab was taking her there, and it
would take her back again. When they reached the convent she had to ask
for Mrs. Ritson, and say she was sent to take her to St. Pancras Station
to meet her husband there, and return to Cumberland by the train at
midnight. That was all.

The clock of the abbey was marking the half-hour after eleven as the cab
passed into Parliament Square. In another minute they drew up before the
convent in Abbey Gardens.

The cabman jumped from the box, rang the bell, and helped Mrs. Drayton
to alight. The iron gate and the door in the portico swung open
together, and a nun stood on the threshold, holding a lamp in her hand.
Mrs. Drayton hobbled up the steps and entered the hall. A deep gloom
pervaded the wide apartment, in which there were but two wicker chairs
and a table. The nun wore a gray serge gown, with a wimple cut square
on her chest, a girdle about her waist, and a rosary hanging by her
side.

"Can I see a lady boarder--Mrs. Ritson?" said the landlady.

The nun started a little, and then answered in a low, melancholy voice,
in which the words she spoke were lost. Mrs. Drayton's eyes were now
accustomed to the gloom, and she looked into the nun's face. It was a
troubled and clouded face, and when it was lifted for an instant to her
own, Mrs. Drayton felt chilled, as if a death's-hand had touched her.

It was the face of the mother of Paul! Older, sadder, calmer, but the
same face still.

The nun dropped her eyes, and made the sign of the cross. Then she
walked with a quick and noiseless step to the o