"So this is the little lady," he said, "who is to be the instrument in the hands of Providence in bringing back an erring family into the folds of Mother Church."
Somebody answered him, and then he spoke to me about marriage, saying it was a holy state, instituted by the Almighty under a natural law and sanctioned by our divine Redeemer into the dignity of a Sacrament, so that those who entered it might live together in peace and love.
"It is a spiritual and sacred union, my child," he said, "a type of the holy mystery of Christ's relation to His Church."
Then he told me I was to make the best possible preparation for marriage in order to obtain the abundant graces of God, and to approach the altar only after penance and communion.
"And when you leave the church, my daughter," he said, "do not profane the day of your marriage by any sinful thought or act, but remember to bear yourself as if Jesus Christ Himself were with you, as He was at the marriage-feast in Cana of Galilee."
Then he warned me that when I entered into the solemn contract of holy matrimony I was to do so in the full consciousness that it could not be broken but by death.
"Whom God has joined together let no man put asunder—remember that, too, my daughter."
Finally he said something about children—that a Catholic marrying a person of another religion must not enter into any agreement whereby any of her children should be brought up in any other than the Catholic faith.
After that, and something said to my father which I cannot recall, he gave me his blessing, in words so beautiful and a voice so sweet that it fell on me like the soft breeze that comes out of the rising sun on a summer morning.
"May the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob be with you, my daughter. May your marriage be a yoke of love and peace, and may you see your children's children to the third and fourth generation."
Then he raised me to my feet, and at a touch from the Chamberlain, I backed out of the room.
When the door had closed on me I drew a deep breath, feeling as if I had come out of the Holy of Holies, and when I reached the Piazza of St. Peter's and came again upon the sight and sound of common things—the cabs and electric cars—it was the same as if I had suddenly descended from heaven to earth.
After my audience with the Pope, following on the Reverend Mother's story, all my objections to marriage had gone, and I wished to tell my father so, but an opportunity did not arise until late the same night and then it was he who was the first to speak.
Being in good spirits, after a dinner to the ecclesiastics, he said, as soon as his guests had gone—speaking in the tone of one who believed he was doing a great thing for me—
"Mary, matters are not quite settled yet, but you might as well know right here what we're trying to fix up for you."
Then he told me.
I was to marry the young Lord Raa!
I was stunned. It was just as if the power of thought had been smitten out of me.
TWENTY-SECOND CHAPTER
That night, and during the greater part of the following day, I felt, without quite knowing why, as if I were living under the dark cloud of a gathering thunderstorm. All my fear of the world, and my desire to escape from it, had fallen upon me afresh. Hence it was not altogether by the blind leading of fate that half an hour before Ave Maria I entered the church of the Convent which the Reverend Mother had given me the name of.
The church was empty when I pushed past the leather hanging that covered the door, but the sacristan was lighting the candles for Benediction, so I went up to the bronze screen, the Cancello, that divides the public part from the part occupied by the Sisters, and knelt on the nearest step.
After a while the church-bell rang overhead, and then (the congregation having gathered in the meantime) the nuns came in by way of a corridor which seemed to issue out of the darkness from under a figure of the Virgin and Child.
They were all in white, snow-white from head to foot, with a glimmer of blue scapular beneath their outer garment, and they wore long thick veils which entirely concealed their features when they entered but were raised when they reached their seats and faced the altar.
Familiar as I was with similar scenes this one moved me as I had never before been moved—the silent white figures, with hands clasped on their breasts, coming in one by one with noiseless and unhurried footsteps, like a line of wraiths from another world.
But a still deeper emotion was to come to me.
As the last of the nuns entered, the Superior as I knew she would be, I recognised her instantly. It was my own Reverend Mother herself; and when, after kneeling to the altar, she came down to her seat nearest to the screen, immediately in front of the place where I knelt, I knew by the tremor of the clasped hands which held the rosary, that she had seen and recognised me.
I trembled and my heart thumped against my breast.
Then the priest entered and the Litany began. It was sung throughout. Almost the whole of the service was sung. Never had Benediction seemed so beautiful, so pathetic, so appealing, so irresistible.
By the time the Tantum ergo had been reached and the sweet female voices, over the soft swell of the organ, were rising to the vaulted roof in sorrowful reparation for the sins of all sinners in the world who did not pray for themselves, the religious life was calling to me as it had never called before.
"Come away from the world," it seemed to say. "Obedience to your heavenly Father cancels all duty to your earthly one. Leave everything you fear behind you, and find peace and light and love."
The service was over, the nuns had dropped their veils and gone out as slowly and noiselessly as they had come in (the last of them with her head down): the sacristan with his long rod was extinguishing the candles on the altar; the church was growing dark and a lay-sister in black was rattling a bunch of keys at the door behind me before I moved from my place beside the rails.
Then I awoke as from a dream, and looking longingly back at the dark corridor down which the nuns had disappeared, I was turning to go when I became aware that a young man was standing beside me and smiling into my face.
"Mally," he said very softly, and he held out his hand.
Something in the voice made me giddy, something in the blue eyes made me tremble. I looked at him but did not speak.
"Don't you know me, Mally?" he said.
I felt as if a rosy veil were falling over my face and neck. A flood of joy was sweeping through me. At last I knew who it was.
It was Martin Conrad, grown to be a man, a tall, powerful, manly man, but with the same face still—an elusive ghost of the boy's face I used to look up to and love.
A few minutes later we were out on the piazza in front of the church, and with a nervous rush of joyous words he was telling me what had brought him to Rome.
Having just "scraped through" his examinations, and taken his degree—couldn't have done so if the examiners had not been "jolly good" to him—he had heard that Lieut. … —was going down to the great ice barrier that bounds the South Pole, to investigate the sources of winds and tides, so he had offered himself as doctor to the expedition and been accepted.
Sailing from the Thames ten days ago they had put into Naples that morning for coal, and taking advantage of the opportunity he had run up to Rome, remembering that I was at school here, but never expecting to see me, and coming upon me by the merest accident in the world—something having said to him, "Let's go in here and look at this queer old church."
He