long wall underneath it up which no cat or monkey could have climbed.
“Here we shall be undisturbed,” said Mrs. Bradley urbanely, when she arrived. No one but George, the Mother Superior, and the two nuns who had escorted Ulrica, and who were seated, like two black birds, bolt upright on hard bedroom chairs, knew where Mrs. Bradley was staying. George drove the sisters back to the convent, and took the car on to Blacklock Tor and garaged it there as usual.
Ulrica also had been up when Mrs. Bradley came in, and while she was undressing Mrs. Bradley noticed a sharp-toothed band of metal, like an uncomfortable bracelet, clasping her upper left arm.
“What’s that?” she asked, regarding it with the detached scientific interest which she would have displayed for totem worship or a ring worn through the lip or nostril. Ulrica flushed, and answered:
“It’s voluntary penance, that’s all.”
“It will probably fester. And I notice that you are wearing it above the injury which you sustained on your journey to my house at Wandles Parva.”
“I don’t see why I had to be sent to Wandles, and I don’t see why you have brought me here. It can’t be necessary,” said the girl.
“Tell me what happened, Ulrica,” said Mrs. Bradley. She took off her hat and coat, and sat on her own bed, looking towards the girl.
“Nothing happened. At the end of afternoon school Mother Saint Francis sent for me and told me to get my packing done because I should be staying here until Wednesday. It’s quite absurd, and, of course, I’m not going to stay.”
“It’s tiresome for you, I know,”said Mrs. Bradley. This mild reply apparently surprised the girl, and she said no more. As it was past eleven o’clock, Mrs. Bradley switched off the light as an encouragement to Ulrica to sleep. She herself did not propose to sleep. She listened to every sound, and strained her eyes for shadows, the approach of death.
Morning came, however, after a night of peace, and Mrs. Bradley was out of the bedroom and seated in the lounge of the hotel, by the time that Ulrica awoke. The girl dressed, and came quietly into the lounge. Nobody else was there. She crossed to Mrs. Bradley’s side, and said a little nervously, “I suppose I may go for a walk before breakfast?”
“Yes, if I come with you. You can’t go out alone.”
“But it’s silly, and I won’t have it.” She stared at Mrs. Bradley as though she were trying to fathom what was going on in her mind. Then, after a hasty glance over her shoulder to make sure that nobody else was there, she said: “I believe you think I did it.”
“Do you?”
“I suppose it isn’t the slightest use to tell you that I loved Ursula, and that I would sooner have died than have any harm befall her?”
“Not the least use. I shouldn’t believe you on either count,” said Mrs. Bradley cheerfully.
“But I was giving up my spare time to helping her with her Latin! You remember you asked me about it. And I was—”
“Be quiet,” said Mrs. Bradley. “If you want to go for a walk I am ready to go.”
So they walked together along the rough, new promenade, and the wind blew strongly in their faces from the west. Ulrica had no idea that a car containing George and Ferdinand cruised past them several times along the new marine drive which ended—for they walked as far—on the moor in a smuggler’s mule-track.
Breakfast was eaten in silence. Mrs. Bradley had a newspaper, and hid behind it without doing very much reading. Her son was breakfasting at a table in an alcove near by, but no sign passed between them. Ulrica ate dry toast and drank sugarless coffee.
“I do wish, please,” she said, quite timidly, at last, “that you’d let me go back to school. If you can’t, will you drive me into Kelsorrow? There is a church there where I can pray.”
“School, then,” said Mrs. Bradley, “but you’ll have to come back here for the night, and you will go from here to Southampton on Wednesday morning.”
It suited her own plans that they should return to the school. Her son sat beside George, but got off before they reached the convent gates, and thanked Mrs. Bradley for the lift as though they had been chance acquaintances. If Ulrica recognised him she made no sign. He walked downhill towards the village. As soon as George had set down his other passengers he drove off at good speed over the bumpy road in the direction from which they had come. He did not stay in Hiversand Bay, however, but drove through it, turned south-east, and arrived in Kelsorrow just after half-past ten. He pulled up outside the High School and rang the bell.
“Message for the headmistress from St. Peter’s Convent,” he said; and, when he was taken in to see the headmistress, he added, “An S.O.S., madam, from the Reverend Mother Superior. Could you spare one of your physical training ladies to give the St. Peter’s young ladies a polishing-up for the Bishop?”
So Miss Bonnet—to her disgust, for it was her day for two free periods at Kelsorrow and she had been going to spend them in overhauling all the apparatus that was not being used by her superior, the full-time mistress—was hustled by George into his car—her own being in the garage, for she did not bother to get it out to go to Kelsorrow School, which was distant about a hundred yards from her lodgings—and driven swiftly and expertly to the convent.
“So very good of Miss Heath. So nice of you, my dear,” said Mother Francis, who did not, as a matter of fact, Miss Bonnet thought, give the slightest impression that either opinion was her true one. She sent Miss Bonnet into the gymnasium, where the sixth form awaited instruction. Miss Bonnet began bad-temperedly, but soon the excellent response she got, as usual, from the girls, and the fun of feeling the secret gratification that power over the actions of others always gave her, brought her out bright, like the sun appearing from clouds.
The girls liked her better like this; and always argued that “Dulcie” was jollier after she’d been in the sulks than when she had started cheerful. Besides, they had had it impressed upon them that they must be at their very best for the Bishop. All things were opened for his inspection: the pigsties no less than the gymnasium; the private school no less than the Orphanage; Mother Saint Cyprian’s needlework, Mother Saint Benedict’s illuminations, Mother Saint Simon-Zelotes’ metal-work—had not the Bishop’s candlesticks been wrought by her, and his altar cloths and missal adorned by the others?
