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“Mademoiselle de Plenhöel!” a voice expostulated behind her; and Mademoiselle de Plenhöel regained her feet with amazing promptness, crimson with confusion, to face the most dreaded of her educators, Madame Marie-Antoinette, whose rigid manners and severe cast of countenance were the iron mask of a heart unsuspectedly tender.

“What does this behavior mean?” she now demanded, standing like a black statue of reproof within a yard of the culprit, her white hands folded within her wide sleeves.

“Pardon me, Madame Marie-Antoinette,” Marguerite stammered, “but you ... you see, Laurence is g-going away ... soon!” Here tears of mingled rage and distress began again to run from beneath the heavy, drooping lashes!

An almost imperceptible wave of delicate color rose to the nun’s still features and wiped twenty years from them! She, too, had known those great despairs of early youth—far greater ones, perhaps—and it was in an altogether altered voice that she replied.

“I am sorry to see you so unhappy, Marguerite,” she said, drawing nearer to her, “but such outbursts of feeling are not seemly, my child; besides, they prove nothing—nothing at all—and are—er—vulgar!” She gave a little cough, and went on, equably: “Laurence has her duties as you have yours. So come with me now, at least until you have controlled yourself”; and as an afterthought she concluded, “By the way, you are both in contravention, for you are well aware that the garden and park are forbidden ground to you when unaccompanied by one of us.”