mechanically into every holy-water stoup—and there were many—in the house, rapidly jerking her left knee towards the ground when passing the door of the chapel, and displaying a flaming badge of the Sacré Coeur upon the front of her alpaca apron.
Zella was far from being unaware that nuns and pupils alike were apt to comment amongst themselves upon this innocent progress towards true faith on the part of the Protestant. She conjectured, very correctly, that Mother Rose might say to Mother Veronica:
"Ah, our Lord has certainly got designs upon that child's soul. I have watched her genuflect in the chapel, when she had no idea that she was being noticed, and I can see the look of faith dawning on her face. It is quite wonderful."
"Yes, indeed, and what a joy it would be to Reverend Mother! We mustn't forget to pray for her daily."
And very likely the conversation would be repeated, with triumphant hopefulness, to Reverend Mother herself.
Zella, quick as she was to adopt the standard of values prevailing amongst her surroundings, desired ardently to become an object of interest to Reverend Mother. Any girl of whom it was said, "Oh, Reverend Mother takes a great interest in her," was at once set apart from her companions as possessing some rare and indefinable virtue, and to this altitude Zella aspired.
With this end in view, she piously insisted upon getting up for the seven o'clock Mass attended daily by the children, knelt when everybody but one or two of the more devout Children of Mary was sitting down, and kept her face hidden in her slender hands throughout the service, with a motionless devotion that might have shamed her companions, provided with prayer-books and rosaries as they were.
But what might be termed Zella's greatest success as a Protestant was her behaviour upon the occasion when she first attended Benediction.
Zella had been to Benediction once or twice in Rome, in one or two of the larger churches, where the ritual had seemed to her utterly incomprehensible and the music merely a meaningless edition of a sacred concert; and she anticipated the convent Benediction with a sensation of unmistakable boredom at the prospect of enduring it twice a week.
But the effect of the small chapel, with the candle and flower decked altar close to the front benches, the organ pealing soft fragments of the Gounod so dearly loved of convents, and the devout voices raised in unison in the rhythm of tunes that, though unknown to Zella, yet carried a general sense of familiarity in their lilting cadences, was to surprise her into emotion.
It was, in fact, the episode of the Frascati church bellson a slightly more elaborate scale.
Only this time Zella thrust the onus of her emotion on to religion, or, rather, the absence of religion.
Oh faith that she had never known! Oh sanctity that would be so easy of attainment if one did but believe! . . . "Lead, kindly Light . . . the night is dark, and I am far from home. ..."
The pathos of this last reflection overcame her altogether, and her face was plunged into her hands.
Her place in the chapel was quite within reasonable view of Reverend Mother's carved stall.
Gounod's "Ave Maria," with variations, was softly rendered by the musical Mother Rose, as the voices became silent and the white-veiled heads in the chapel bent low.
Oh the beauty of the Catholic religion! Zella, who knew that she had now penetrated to the heart of it, wandered into a misty metaphorical prayer, in which the wings of a dove became entangled with the strayings of a lamb outside the fold. A chance movement of her hand betrayed the gratifying fact that the ledge of the bench in front of her was extremely wet.
Zella's tears immediately redoubled.
The girls on either side of her exchanged a glance over her bent head and heaving shoulders, and she was acutely aware of it, with that curious sharpening of every faculty which is the effect of a certain form of emotion.
The singing of the Litany of Loreto, Zella thought, made the deepest chords in her vibrate unbearably. In other and more accurate words, it put the last touch to her enjoyment.
The apparently endless reiteration of the very simple air, the solo being taken by a soft, untrained, but Very true and sweet soprano from the choir, and the responses coming in unison from the whole chapel, was unlike anything Zella had heard before.
The simple Latinity, almost altogether intelligible to her from her knowledge of French and Italian, and the poetic beauty of each invocation, filled her with a sort of poignant pleasure that found its best expression in her choking sobs and streaming tears.
Her one desire was that the Litany should not cease. At last, however, it was ended, and Zella, divining that the end of the service was near, modified the violence of her emotion.
She had successfully graduated into the not unbecoming stages of swollen eyelids, pale face, and downcast lashes still sparkling with tears, when the children rose at the usual signal, and filed slowly two by two in front of Reverend Mother's stall, past the high-altar, and out of the chapel.
To her mixed relief and disappointment, no one inquired into the cause of her tears, but Mother Veronica patted her shoulder that evening in the refectory, and said, "One of these days we must find time for our talk, dear. I will try and see you on Sunday afternoon."
And Dorothy Brady, with more friendliness than she had yet displayed, observed at recreation:
"I'm sure you're frightfully delicate, Zella. You look awfully tired to-night."
At which gratifying remark Zella felt a passionate and altogether disproportionate sense of gratitude.
The next day she heard, with a curious unacknowledged sense of triumph, that Reverend Mother would see her that evening.
A private interview with Reverend Mother was no light matter. It generally implied either some offence too heinous to be dealt with by a class mistress, a family bereavement, or the approaching responsibility of a reception into the Sodality of the Children of Mary. If the honour could not be accounted for in any of these ways, it was surmised in whispers that the recipient of it must be "getting a vocation."
Zella was agreeably conscious of her own importance when, towards the end of the evening recreation, a lay Sister made her way to the nun in charge, and delivered a message in the mysterious half-whisper characteristic of convent communications, and with many side-glances towards Zella herself.
The girls stopped playing and looked intensely curious, and the nun immediately said: "Go on with your game, children. Why can't you make a little mortification of your curiosity for once?"
Thus compelled, the little mortification was halfheartedly attempted; but Zella was quite aware of the number of eyes that followed her when the nun had made half a dozen cryptic signals to convey to her that she should follow Sister Mary Anne.
Once in the passage, the wrinkled old Sister turned on her a face beaming with pleasure.
"Mother is going to see you in the parlour! Don't you think you're very lucky, dear? Now, mind you're very open with her. She'll give you all sorts of help, and see right down into your very soul. Ah, I assure you that Reverend Mother is very wonderful."
Zella thought that she was growing tired of hearing so.
"And you that haven't got a mother, poor child!" said the old lay Sister compassionately. But you'll find one in Reverend
