Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/40

 right side, did she not—or was that the one you call Sister George? Yes? Then I am afraid I do not recall her, after all."

He paused a moment as he was passing Sister George. She had regarded him with a singular look in her wet eyes.

"I am sorry to hear of the loss to the convent," he said, a little formally. "Yet I am Catholic enough to know how you all regard this. In fact, perhaps it is an odd sense of sympathy that makes me feel for the sister. We poor worldlings have to lean on human love for our support. Sister Edgar was spared any of the pain which comes from that being deferred or in jeopardy. It is her spiritual marriage, this death. That is why I feel such a singular sympathy—almost felicitation," he added, with a slow smile of very winning sweetness.

If he had meant Sister George to ask the reason for such enigmatic words, she did not. She marked the sparkle in his eye and the unconscious way in which he straightened himself. Inexperienced as she was, there was no mistaking his meaning nor the buoyant content of the man to whom the Only Woman had at last said "yes."

She lowered her eyes and bowed gravely. He accepted her dismissal of him with equal gravity, bowed, and went his happy way.