Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/60

 relaxed. Soon her regular breathing showed that she was asleep.

Sister Philomene sat in a chair at the foot of the crib, facing the small patient. She had never before taken a really appraising look at him. She did it now, as he lay in a seeming stupor before her. The deep flush of the night had given place to pallor, and the little face was almost as white as the pillow on which it lay. Against this whiteness the baby's tumbled yellow curls were very attractive. So were the blue veins in his temples and the pathetic droop of his lips, and the long golden lashes on the cheeks that somehow seemed to have lost all their plumpness in this short time.

Sister Philomene recalled his face as she had always seen it, with the blue eyes dancing, the tiny teeth flashing, the dimples all in evidence, while the baby voice gurgled to her in the pure delight of living. It seemed impossible that this was the same child. Verily Frederick Addison Malcolm, master of all he surveyed at two, had been suddenly overthrown, and his downfall was a tragic one.

Sister Philomene mentally reviewed what she had heard of his history. His father had died within a year of his birth, and his young mother had followed in ten months. She had been a convent girl, and an especial protégée of