The Mother Superior stretched her hands out over the head on her knees as some great, fierce, old, gray eagle, scarred and strong with the storms of life, might make a movement to shield its imperilled young. The tone in which Sister Dolorosa had spoken startled her as the discovered edge of a precipice. It was so quiet, so abrupt, so terrifying with its suggestion of an abyss. For a moment she prayed silently and intensely. "Heaven mercifully shield you from harm!" she then said, in an awe-stricken whisper. "But, timid lamb, what harm can come to you?" Sister Dolorosa suddenly rose and stood before the Mother Superior. "I mean," she said, with her eyes on the floor and her voice scarcely audible--"I mean--if I should ever fail, would you cast me out?" "My child!--Sister!--Sister Dolorosa!--Cast you out!" The Mother Superior started up and folded her arms about the slight, dark figure, which at once seemed to be standing aloof with infinite loneliness. For some time she sought to overcome this difficult, singular mood. "And now, my daughter," she murmured at last, "go to sleep and forget these foolish fears. I am near you!" There seemed to be a fortress of sacred protection and defiance in these words; but the next instant her head was bowed, her upward-pointing finger raised in the air, and in a tone of humble self-correction she added: "Nay, not I; the Sleepless guards you! Good-night." Sister Dolorosa lifted her head from the strong shoulder and turned her eyes, now luminous, upon the troubled face. "Forgive me, Mother!" she said, in a voice of scornful resolution. "Never--never again will I disturb you with such weakness as I have shown to-night. I _know_ that no evil can befall me! Forgive me, Mother. Good-night." While she sleeps learn her history. Pauline Cambron was descended from one of those sixty Catholic families of Maryland that formed a league in 1785 for the purpose of emigrating to Kentucky without the rending of social ties or separation from the rites of their ancestral faith. Since then the Kentucky branch of the Cambrons has always maintained friendly relations with the Maryland branch, which is now represented by one of the wealthy and cultivated families of Baltimore. On one side the descent is French; and, as far back as this can be traced, there runs a tradition that some of the most beautiful of its women became barefoot Carmelite nuns in the various monasteries of France or on some storm-swept island of the Mediterranean Sea.