Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/95

 The blond girl laughed again. "What for?" she said; "we haven't any secrets to talk over. At least I haven't. Have you, Nell? And I hope you haven't come here to preach." She put on her dress as she spoke; it was one of the silk, fluffy things that stage dancers wear. It was short and very low, and gave me quite a shock there in the dressing-room. I don't think she had much delicate feeling. She fastened it and fluffed it out and turned round to us with her mouth full of pins. Her whole manner was as cool and off-hand as if two or three actresses from the next dressing-room had run in to see her.

"Well, I suppose you three are up to some lark," she said, with a kind of sneer. "This tale of devotion is all very well, but I notice Nell didn't mind leaving me when I was a kid."

If you print this story you must put in something here about the contrast between the vulgar-looking girl in her cheap finery, and her paint and her bare arms and shoulders, and the beautiful nun who sat looking up at her with such an expression of suffering in her eyes as I hope I'll never see in any eyes again. I can't describe the thing, but I felt it and so did Grace, and we both knew that we were looking at a tragedy.