ther end of the hall, and
sounded a deep gong. In a moment this summoned a sister--a novice,
dressed like the first, except all in white. Mrs. Drayton was now
trembling from head to foot, but she repeated her question, and was led
into a bare, chill room, and left alone.

CHAPTER XIX.

When Greta parted from Hugh Ritson three hours before, she was in an
agony of suspense. Another strange threat had terrified her. She had
been asked to make choice of one of two evils; refusing to believe in
Hugh Ritson's power, she had rejected both. But the uncertainty was
terrible. To what lengths might not passion, unrequited passion,
defeated passion, outraged passion, lead a man like Hugh Ritson? Without
pity, without remorse, with a will that was relentless and a heart that
never knew truth, he was a man to flinch at no extremity. What had he
meant?

Greta's first impulse had been to go in search of her husband, but this
was an idle and a foolish thought. Where should she look? Besides this,
she had promised to remain in the convent until her husband should come
for her, and she must keep her word. She did not go to supper when the
gong sounded, but crept up to her room. The bell rang for vespers, and
Greta did not go to the chapel. She lay down in anguish and wept
scalding tears. The vesper hymn floated up to her where she lay, and she
was still weeping. There was no light in this dark place; there was no
way out of this maze but to wait and suffer.

And slowly the certainty stole upon her that Hugh Ritson had made no
idle threat. He was a resolute man; he had given her a choice of two
courses, and had she not taken a selfish part? If Paul, her husband,
were indeed in danger, no matter from what machination of villainy--was
it much to ask that she, his wife, should rescue him by a sacrifice that
fell heaviest upon herself? Hugh Ritson had been right--her part had
been a selfish one. Oh, where was Mr. Christian? She had telegraphed for
him, and he had answered that he would come; yet hour had followed hour,
and still he had not arrived.

Three hours she tossed in agony. She heard the sisters pass up the
echoing stone staircase to their dormitories, and then the silent house
became as dumb as a vault. Not a ripple flowed into this still tarn from
the great stream of the world that rushed and surged and swelled with
the clangor of a million voices around its incrusted sides.

Her window overlooked the Abbey Gardens. Al