Page:The Portrait of a Lady (London, Macmillan & Co., 1881) Volume 2.djvu/47

 girl, with two large bunches of roses—one of them all white, the other red.

"I give you your choice, mamman Catherine," said the child. "It is only the colour that is different, mamman Justine; there are just as many roses in one bunch as another."

The two sisters turned to each other, smiling and hesitating, with—"Which will you take?" and "No, it's for you to choose."

"I will take the red," said mother Catherine, in the spectacles. "I am so red myself. They will comfort us on our way back to Rome."

"Ah, they won't last," cried the young girl. "I wish I could give you something that would last!"

"You have given us a good memory of yourself, my daughter. That will last!"

"I wish nuns could wear pretty things. I would give you my blue beads," the child went on.

"And do you go back to Rome to-night?" her father asked.

"Yes, we take the train again. We have so much to do là-bas."

"Are you not tired?"

"We are never tired."

"Ah, my sister, sometimes," murmured the junior votaress.

"Not to-day, at any rate. We have rested too well here. Que Dieu vous garde, ma fille."

Their host, while they exchanged kisses with his daughter, went forward to open the door through which they were to pass; but as he did so he gave a slight exclamation, and stood looking beyond. The door opened into a vaulted ante-chamber, as high as a chapel, and paved with red tiles; and into this ante-chamber a lady had just been admitted by a servant, a lad in shabby livery, who was now ushering her toward the