Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/25

 flitting toward the wing of the building occupied by those who had taken their final vows. The two followed the black-garbed procession into the main corridor of the left wing, and, separating from them there, passed slowly to the chapel. Here the voice of the unseen singer, practising softly in the organ-loft, seemed an audible expression of the silent prayer that filled their hearts as they knelt down together.

In the beginning Miss Iverson had remarked prophetically that the coming of Professor Varick to St. Mary's boded no good to that institution.

"Look at all these susceptible girls," said that sophisticated young person, whose life had been hopelessly blighted at sixteen by a love affair which had kept her awake for three successive nights. "It's eminently proper and highly educative to have the dear old priests instruct us, but to inject a young and handsome man into the curriculum is quite another matter. Professor Varick isn't a day over thirty-eight, notwithstanding those lovely gray locks on his temples, and he's very handsome. Did you ever see such eyes? Then that air of gentle melancholy, as if he had a past! Within a month every girl in the institution will be in love with him. Mark my words."