Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/251

, and he had driven there on the chance that an interview might be granted him. And because he was to come, her family had not yet written her of their great loss. Sister Philomene made her decision promptly.

"Ask him to be so kind as to wait," she said to the portress, "and tell Sister Cuthbert I would like to see her." She glanced sympathetically at the young nun when she responded to the summons.

"Dr. Sedgwick is here to see you," she said, "and to tell you the details of your dear mother's—death. We will go to him together, if you would like it." She straightened the papers on her desk very carefully as she spoke, and listened, with a little quickening of her steady heart-beats, for some sound from the other woman. There was none. Sister Cuthbert was silently moving towards the door. She stepped back as she reached it, and stood aside for her superior to precede her. Sister Philomene looked at her as she passed, and something in the nun's expression made her catch her breath. Sister Cuthbert was almost smiling.

The doctor, awaiting them in the prim little reception-room at the right of the convent entrance, was stalking up and down the highly polished floor, bending his shaggy head