Good gracious! I suppose you're the same as your father and mother, if they're Protestants. Or are they Catholics who don't practise their religion?" demanded Mary suspiciously.
Zella wished that she had sufficient courage to tell Mary that her questions were becoming impertinent. Being, however, far from possessing anything of the kind, she tried the effect of a rebukeful solemnity.
But they're "My mother is dead," she said very low.
"Oh!" Mary looked uncomfortable, and said no more.
Zella spent the rest of the meal in silence, and in telling herself that she had traded upon her loss as a cheap bid for pity. It was of small consolation to feel that the bid had not been particularly successful.
After what seemed to Zella an interminable while, the nun at the end of the refectory gave a signal by clapping her hands smartly together. There was instant silence, only the irrepressible Dorothy Brady muttering: "No more talking at meals for a whole week! Bother!" thereby greatly relieving Zella, who thought that meals in such company would be infinitely preferable eaten in silence.
A voice gabbled some formula which Zella supposed to be grace, and the girls filed out of the refectory one by one, Zella following the blue-uniformed figure in front of her.
Through bare whitewashed passages, and a big hall with a pedestal on which stood an enormous statue, they filed in silence, until a large match-boarded room, containing no furniture save a battered-looking piano and one or two forms, was reached. Here the girls ranged themselves into two silent rows, to the surprise of Zella, who had supposed that they were about to begin the evening recreation.
But the spectacled nun who stood facing them gave another clap of the hands, and instantly there was a fluttering motion all along the line.
Zella for one moment wondered whether the entire school had gone mad, as she recognized in all these flourishes the sign of the Cross.
However, the nun spoke a short prayer aloud in French, the girls responded in a loud gabble, and another signal was given, at which they all began to talk or play in varying degrees of shrillness and noisiness.
Zella stood bewildered.
The nun approached her, and said with some obviousness:
"Are you a new arrival, dear?"
"Yes," faltered Zella; "I only came this evening."
"You will soon get used to it, and like it very much."
"Never!" thought Zella, looking more dejected than before. But aloud she said very gently: "Oh yes, I'm sure I shall. But I've never been to school before, and it seems rather strange at first."
The nun patted her hand absently, calling two passing children to order at the same time.
"Rose and Mollie, not two together, if you please."
Zella looked astounded.
"That is one of our rules, you know," explained the nun. "In fact, I think it is the same in every convent. Girls must not be two together without a third."
"Why not?" said Zella.
"It is against the rule," repeated the nun, as though that were reason enough. But, seeing Zella still obviously bewildered, "Two people talking together are very apt to be tempted to uncharitable speaking, you know. They say the Devil always makes a third in tête-à-tête conversations," said the nun very seriously.
Zella looked at her in amazement, asking herself indignantly, "Does she take me for a baby?" and utterly at a loss in a world where that medieval myth, the Devil, was apparently received as an accepted institution.
The nun began to pace up and down the long room, and Zella, not knowing what else to do, walked beside her. Presently a girl of about sixteen joined them, gazing curiously at Zella, who felt that her black-and... white check skirt, soft white blouse, and loosened hair fastened only by a broad ribbon on the top of her head, were so many objects of contempt to her severely pigtailed and uniformed contemporaries.
"What is your name?" asked the girl suddenly.
"Zella de Kervoyou."
"What?"
Zella once more flushed scarlet.
Even the nun laughed a little, and said good-naturedly enough: "What a mouthful!"
At that moment Zella could willingly have killed her.
"Aren't you English?" demanded the girl.
"I am a good deal English, but partly French," stammered Zella, hardly knowing what she said.
"What did you say your first name was, dear?" inquired the nun, looking pleasant, but quite uninterested. "Zella."
"Is there a saint of that name? Surely not."
Zella scented a note of disapproval, and hastily replied:
"My real name is Gisele; I am only called Zella for short."
"I see. A French name. I expect you can talk French nicely, then; and here is an opportunity, for here comes Mere Jeanne to take my place."
An old nun, who seemed to Zella perfectly indistinguishable from all the other nuns she had already seen, was ambling slowly down the room, peering from side to side with evidently short-sighted eyes.
The younger mistress walked briskly up to her.
"Here is a new pupil, Mere Jeanne, with a French name," she said, rather as though introducing a curiosity.
Zella came forward with her pretty, hesitating smile. Mere Jeanne immediately kissed her on both cheeks, and inquired:
"But you are not French, child?"
"À moitié," answered Zella readily.
The old nun was enchanted, and began at once to speak her native tongue:
"C'est gentil! Comme elle parle bien francais, cette petite! Comment vous appelez, mon chèri?
"Zella de Kervoyou."
"Je connais ce nom-là, voyons! C'est Breton, n'est-ce pas?"
For the first time Zella felt a ray of comfort. She only trusted that the girls gathered round understood French well enough to grasp the fact that Mere Jeanne, at all events, saw nothing either strange or amusing in possessing a French name such as the noble one of Kervoyou.
For the rest of the evening Zella remained thankfully beside the old French nun, talking to her very prettily in her own language, and gaining repeated exclamations of praise at the purity of her French.
But even this solitary triumph was not destined to remain an unmitigated one. Mere Jeanne presently asked with much interest where Zella had made to Première Communion.
"I—I am afraid I am not a Catholic."
"Not a Catholic!" exclaimed the old nun in consternation. "But you have come to us for
