Page:The Green Bay Tree (1926).pdf/58

 clock struck twelve before the girl was able to summon courage to address her mother, and when at last she succeeded, she was forced to interrupt the old woman in the midst of a new book by Collette Willy, sent her by Lily, which she was reading with the aid of a silver mounted glass.

"Mother," began Irene gently. "Mother . . ."

Julia Shane put down the glass and looked up. "What is it?"

"Mother, I've decided to enter the church."

It was an announcement far from novel, a hope expressed year after year only to be trodden under foot by the will of the old woman. But this time there was a new quality in Irene's voice, a shade of firmness and determination that was not at all in keeping with the girl's usual humility. The mother's face grew stern, almost hard. Cheri slipped gently to the floor where it lay forgotten.

"Is this my reward for letting you go back to the convent?" The voice was cold, dominating, a voice which always brought Irene into a trembling submission. The church to both meant but one thing—the Roman Catholic church—which John Shane, a Romanist turned scoffer, had mocked all his life, a church which to his Presbyterian widow was always the Scarlet Woman of Rome.

The girl said nothing but kept her eyes cast down, fingering all the while the carving on the arm of her rosewood chair. She had grown desperately pale. Her thin fingers trembled.

"Has this anything to do with Lily?" asked the mother with a sudden air of suspicion, and Irene answered "No! No!" with such intensity that Julia Shane, convinced that she still knew nothing, tried a new tack.

"You know how I feel," she said. "I am old and I am tired. I have had enough unhappiness, Irene. This would be the last."

Tears came into the eyes of the girl, and the trembling grew and spread until her whole body was shaking. "It is all I have," she cried.

"Don't be morbid!"

The eagle look came into Mrs. Shane's face—the look with which she faced down all the world save her own family.