Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/238

 mother's recovery, without doing what I can to secure her that boon. Now you have the facts. You will do as you think best—and in any event you will pardon the interference of a friend who has known you from your childhood.

"Respectfully yours, "."

"Sister Cuthbert must take as much of Sister Rodriguez's work as she can while I am away," reflected Sister Philomene, slowly. "Her mother is a good Catholic, and will die happily in the Church. She herself realizes that her daughter's duty lies here. The case is clear to me; I hope it will be to Sister Cuthbert. And yet—it is hard, for she must be told of it, and her love for her mother is the strongest I have ever seen."

She quietly returned the letters to their envelopes after this brief summing-up of the question. It was part of her routine work to read the correspondence that came to the nuns under her care, and the duty frequently brought in its train harassing problems and responsibilities. It had never brought her a harder one than this. Before her rose the face of the young novice, at work in happy unconsciousness of the clouds that hung over the dear home she had forsaken. She was in the infirmary assisting Sister Rodriguez, the convent