The Guests of Hercules | Page 8

moments. They had left her a child, with a
child's soft curves and a child's rose-leaf skin. Yet she looked to Peter
very human now, and no saint. Her large eyes, of that golden gray
rimmed with violet, called hazel, seemed to be asking, "What is life?"
[Illustration: MARY GRANT]
Peter thought her intensely pathetic; and somehow the fact that new
shoes had been forgotten, and that Mary still wore the stubby,
square-toed abominations of her novitiate, made her piteous in her
friend's eyes. The American girl hotly repented not writing to her father
in New York and telling him that she must leave the convent with Mary
Grant. Probably he would not have consented, but she might have
found some way of persuading him to change his mind. Or she could
have gone without his consent, and made him forgive her afterward.
Even now she might go; but dimly and sadly she felt that Mary did not
really wish for her superior knowledge of the world to lean upon; Mary
longed to find out things for herself.
Peter did not sleep well that night, and when she did sleep she dreamed
a startling dream of Mary at Monte Carlo.
"She'll go there!" the girl said to herself, waking. "I know she'll go. I

don't know why I know it, but I do."
Trying to doze again, she lay with closed eyes; and a procession of
strange, unwished-for thoughts busily pushed sleep away from her
brain. She seemed to see people hurrying from many different parts of
the world, with their minds all bent on the same thing: getting to Monte
Carlo as soon as possible. She saw these people, good and bad,
mingling their lives with Mary's life; and she saw the Fates, like
Macbeth's witches, laughing and pulling the strings which controlled
these people's actions toward Mary, hers toward them, as if they were
all marionettes.

II
Lady MacMillan of Linlochtry Castle, who was a devout Catholic,
came often from her place in the neighbourhood to see her half-sister,
Mother Superior at the Convent of St. Ursula-of-the-Lake. Mary
Grant's only knowledge of the world outside the convent had been
given her by Lady MacMillan, with whom when a schoolgirl she had
sometimes spent a few days, and might have stopped longer if she had
not invariably been seized by pangs of homesickness. Lady
MacMillan's household, to be sure, did not afford many facilities for
forming an opinion of the world at large, though a number of carefully
selected young people had been entertained for Mary's benefit. Its
mistress was an elderly widow, and had been elderly when the child
saw her first: but occasionally, before she became a postulant, Mary
had been taken to Perth to help Lady MacMillan do a little shopping;
and once she had actually stayed from Saturday to Tuesday at
Aberdeen, where she had been to the theatre. This was a memorable
event; and the sisters at the convent had never tired of hearing the
fortunate girl describe her exciting experiences, for theirs was an
enclosed order, and it was years since most of them had been outside
the convent gates.
Lady MacMillan was a large, very absent-minded and extremely
near-sighted lady, like her half-sister, Mary's adored Reverend Mother;

but neither so warm-hearted nor so intelligent. Still, Mary was used to
this old friend, and fond of her as well. It was not like going away
irrevocably from all she knew and loved, to be going under Lady
MacMillan's wing. Still, she went weeping, wondering how she had
ever made up her mind to the step, half passionately grateful to
Reverend Mother for not being angry with her weakness and lack of
faith, half regretful that some one in authority had not thought it right to
hold her forcibly back.
There was no railway station within ten miles of the old convent by the
lake. Lady MacMillan came from her little square box of a castle still
farther away, in the old-fashioned carriage which she called a
"barouche," drawn by two satin-smooth, fat animals, more like tightly
covered yet comfortable brown sofas than horses.
It was a great excitement for Lady MacMillan to be going to London,
and a great exertion, but she did not grudge trouble for Mary Grant. Not
that she approved of the girl's leaving the convent. It was Reverend
Mother who had to persuade her half-sister that, if Mary had not the
vocation, it was far better that she should read her own heart in time,
and that the girl was taking with her the blessings and prayers of all
those who had once hoped to keep their dear one with them forever.
Still it was the greatest sensation the convent had known, that Mary
should be going; and Reverend Mother