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 Mother, dear, just as we all do."
She bestowed Zella in a small scantily furnished parlour, and there left her to her anticipations for the better part of half an hour.
At last Reverend Mother made her tardy entrance, with no appearance of haste and no expressions of regret, and Zella rose rather timidly.
"Well, my dear child, so you've come to have a little talk with me, and I'm very glad to see you. And how do you like our convent life?"
"Oh, very much," said Zella glibly, the reply having been frequently on her lips during the past fortnight.
"That s riglit—that's right. It is not like anything you have ever known before, eh?"
"No," said Zella, raising her eyes with an expression of confiding candour. "You see, I've never been to school, and I don't think I've been brought up in quite an ordinary way, either."
"No?" said Reverend Mother encouragingly, and sitting down as though for a long conference.
Zella felt that she was being a success.
"My father and—and mother did not really bring me up in any special religion, or teach me much about it," she faltered, the facts of the case suddenly taking new aspects before her eyes as she related them. "I have hardly ever been to church, and I never had catechism lessons and—and things like other girls."
"Poor child! and you are beginning to feel the want of religion. We can none of us do without it, you know, dear."
Zella thought of her father, whom she honestly supposed to be a man without religion, and then of the Baronne, with her intense, almost child-like faith.
"My grandmother is a Catholic," she said wistfully, "and my aunt, but all my English relations are Protestants."
A recollection crossed her mind as she spoke of Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, and the indignation with which that lady would have heard her Anglican Catholicity profaned by such an adjective as Protestant.
"And does not the Protestant Faith satisfy you, Zella?" inquired Reverend Mother gravely.
Zella readily followed her lead.
"It does not really mean very much to me," she returned, with much truth.
"You must pray for faith, and Our Lord will answer that prayer in His own way and His own time."
It was not quite the response expected by the impetuous Zella, and she supposed herself to be on the wrong tack, as it were.
"So long as one does one's best, I am sure God does not mind which creed one professes. After all, we are all Christians and all trying to get to Heaven," she informed Reverend Mother with a confident smile, and a happy remembrance of a similar doctrine overheard long ago amongst her mother's friends at Villetswood.
But