Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/173

 was bounded by those high walls, softened by their covering of ivy, but hard and cold under its green mass. Yet she felt no regrets. Alice smiled at her radiantly as they rose to go to the chapel.

"One would think you knew him," she said, dreamily. "You seem to understand him so well." Sister George looked down from her stately height with a curious expression in her gray eyes.

"We have not always lived here, you know," she said, gently.

The slender figure beside her skimmed along the garden path without answering. Miss Twombly had reached the point in her reverie where Dr. Schuyler was ushered into the library, to find her there alone. He would ask for his answer and he would find it ready. She hardly heard the nun's words.

She recalled them as she sat in the library that evening—alone with Richard. The soft evening air blew in through the open windows, and on it was the scent of the growing things outside. High in the heavens hung the moon, the face in it smiling at the two as if they alone, of all those in the world, were looking at it with lovers' eyes. Some one in the neighboring house was playing softly on the piano. The