Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/230

 morning appointments. She was almost herself—quick, alert, clear-eyed. She pushed resolutely into her mental background the memory of the night's experience. This was the close of the nineteenth century, and she was a  product. Visions could hardly be taken more seriously than to gather from them such comfort as they might yield. She smiled and sighed at the same time as she entered her library at two that afternoon. She had to go to her friend's house at three to perform the operation, but in the interval she would look in the old desk that held the accumulated notes of years, and see what her note-book said. Her hand trembled a little as she unlocked the lowest left-hand drawer.

Far back in the corner, dust-covered and hidden under some French journals, was the forgotten note-book. But this was broad daylight, and the life of the great city was going on outside of her library windows. It had merely been a logical trick of memory, she reflected, that had brought the thought of the book to her while she slept, and had connected it with Sister Estelle.

She sat down and plunged into its record. Yes. Here was the case of Madame Bertrand. She read with close attention, absorbed in the purely scientific interest of the subject.