of perplexity, "she would think it so rude, wouldn't she?"
There speaks human respect," emphatically retorted Mother Veronica. "What will other people think? Once we begin to ask ourselves that question the Devil has gained half the victory. Besides, you need not make yourself conspicuous. Just sit at the table, smiling pleasantly, attending to the wants of your neighbours on either side, and as. likely as not your empty plate will pass unnoticed. People are not always thinking about you."
Mother Veronica's method of rendering herself inconspicuous at the luncheon-table, however, failed to make any appeal to Zella.
But if one was asked why one wasn't eating?" she persisted.
"Then speak the truth, dear," energetically replied the nun. Just be quite simple and open about it all, and answer very quietly that, as a Catholic, you are obeying the rule of your Church in abstaining from meat one day a week, the same day as that on which our dear Lord died for us. I assure you that sometimes a little word like that, and the edification given by seeing a Catholic faithful to her religion in those ways, have just made all the difference to a soul—perhaps brought it into the Church, even."
Zella again tried to visualize social intercourse as run on the lines indicated by Mother Veronica, and again failed.
"I can assure you," continued the earnest nun, "that people in the world are very much on the lookout to see how Catholics behave. Protestants know very well what a Catholic ought to be, and you will find that they respect you much more for living up to your duties, even though you may get laughed at."
Zella listened with a growing sense of discontent. Was this all the light that the convent teaching could shed upon the future? Were these words of final advice, which she felt to be so curiously inadequate, the outcome of a Catholic education, the summing up, as it were, of a long course of preparation?
The familiar sense of unreality obsessed her anew. These counsels did not really mean anything. Circumstances would never shape themselves in such fashion as to require the course of conduct prescribed by Mother Veronica.
A dim foreshadowing of new standards, of yet another scale of relative values, troubled Zella's thoughts of the near future.
XVIII
THE midsummer breaking-up drew near. The last days arrived, weighted with all that oppression consecrated to last days, and vaguely reminding Zella of the atmosphere at Boscombe. Several of the elder girls were leaving, and the school watched with interest to see the degree of grief which would mark the affection in which each held the beloved convent.
"Mary McNeill has begun to howl already. I saw her last night at Benediction."
"Poor thing! She always cries fairly easily, though. When I leave next year, I expect I shall simply howl buckets full. It'll be too frightful."
"Dorothy Brady hasn't cried a bit, and yet she minds leaving most frightfully, I know. But she's bound to begin sooner or later."
"Oh, bound to!"
Such fragments of discussion filled the air. Zella began to consider her own attitude, and to wonder anxiously how a happy medium could best be struck between excessive weeping, which might be difficult of achievement, and heartless indifference, signalled by a tearless departure. Mary McNeill had been at the convent for ten years, Dorothy for six, and Zella did not feel that her comparatively short experience entitled her to a quite equal display of emotion. Nevertheless, she reminded herself, it was at the convent that she had undergone the deepest and truest experience which life would doubtless ever have to offer her—her conversion to the Catholic Faith.
That evening at night prayers she began to cry, and cried at intervals during the next twenty-four hours. Zella's tears were always very ready, and in the general atmosphere of moisture and farewell they flowed easily.
Her emotion gave rise to a certain amount of compassion amongst the girls, all more or less in a state of excitement and tension at the prospect of two months' holiday. Zella came nearer to realizing her dream of popularity during her last day at school than ever before.
She walked about the garden arm-in-arm with companions who had hitherto serenely ignored her existence, exchanged lavish promises of correspondence with girls with whom she had nothing in common save one or two years spent under the same roof, and visited every shrine and statue in the house and grounds with the inward murmured petition, "Oh, bring me back here soon, for always!"
It was almost impossible to resist dropping hints of a future return, which impressed the other girls quite unmistakably, but Zella reserved her most touching effusions for her farewell interview with Reverend Mother.
"Oh, Reverend Mother, I feel that I shall come back!" she cried with uplifted eyes and that ring of innocent conviction in her voice which always made her feel most in earnest. "I can't feel that I'm really leaving the convent; it seems, somehow, meant to be my home. I shall come back very, very soon, if you'll have me, and then I think God means me to stay here always."
"What, instead of the Carmelites?" said Reverend Mother, smiling a little.
Zella had momentarily forgotten her recent aspirations towards Mount Carmel, but she contrived not to look disconcerted, and to maintain her slightly exalted expression.
"I think so. I think—I hope—that I only want to go where God wishes me to be, but it seems to me that I wasn't sent here in such a wonderful way for nothing."
"Well, my dear child, I shall pray for you with all my heart," said Reverend Mother, serious at last. "If you have indeed a religious vocation, it is a most wonderful grace, and you must be very, very faithful."
"Oh, I will be!" interposed Zella fervently.
"Do not forget your spiritual reading, and all the pious practices you have learnt here. I know that there may be difficulties as to daily Mass," continued Reverend Mother with an air of concession; "but when you can, you will make a point of it, I know."
"Oh yes, yes!"
"Above all, my dear child, be faithful to your meditation. A quarter of an hour every day—I will not ask you to promise more."
"It shall be half an hour," declared Zella resolutely.
"Well, well, you are a good fervent child, and must see what you have time for. There will be home duties as well which must not be neglected—your good father, for instance. There will be many little ways in which you can add to his comfort—perhaps see that his room is well dusted, or do some mending for him now and then."
Zella tried not to think that the household at Villetswood would be more disconcerted than edified if she indulged in these domestic pieties.
"You will be a good child, I feel sure, and perhaps one day you will have the happiness of bringing your father into the Church. I shall pray much for that, and for you. Now, my dear child, there are others waiting to see me, and I must say good-bye to you."
Zella dropped on to her knees.
"Oh, give me your blessing, Reverend Mother!" she implored in a muffled voice.
She rose from her knees with the ready tears
