“Don’t cry, Mrs. O’Daly,” was all Bernard could think of to say. The demonstration might perhaps have impressed him had he not perforce looked over the weeping lady’s head straight into the face of the mother superior. There he saw written such contemptuous incredulity that he himself became conscious of skepticism. “_Don’t_ take on so!” he urged, this time less gently, and strove to disengage himself. But Mrs. Fergus clung to his hand and resolutely buried her face against his collar. Sister Ellen had risen to her feet beside Mother Agnes, and he heard the two nuns sniff indignantly. Then he realized that the situation was ridiculous. “What is it you suspect?” he asked of the mother superior, eager to make a diversion of some kind. “You can’t be imagining that harm’s come to Miss Kate--that she ’s drowned?” “That same _was_ our belafe,” said Mother Agnes, glaring icily upon him and his sobbing burden. The inference clearly was that the spectacle before her affronted eyes had been enough to overturn all previous convictions, of whatever character. Bernard hesitated no longer. He almost wrenched his hand free and then firmly pushed Mrs. Fergus away. “It’s all nonsense,” he said, assuming a confidence he did not wholly feel. “She’s no more drowned than I am.” “Faith, I had me fears for _you_, wid such a dale of tears let loose upon ye,” remarked Mother Agnes, dryly. The young man looked straight into the reverend countenance of the superior and confided to it an audacious wink. “I’ll be back in no time,” he said, taking up his hat. “Now don’t you fret another bit. She’s all right. I know it. And I’ll go and find her.” And with that he was gone. An ominous silence pervaded the reception hall. The two nuns, still standing, stared with wrathful severity at Mrs. Fergus. She bore their gaze with but an indifferent show of composure, patting her disordered crimps with an awkward hand, and then moving aimlessly across the room. “I’ll be going now, I’m thinking,” she said, at last, yet lingered in spite of her words. The nuns looked slowly at one another, and uttered not a word. “Well, thin, ’t is small comfort I have, annyway, or consolation either, from the lot of ye,” Mrs. Fergus felt impelled to remark, drawing her shawl up on her head and walking toward the door. “An’ me wid me throubles, an’ me nerves.” “Is it consolation you’re afther?” retorted Mother Agnes, bitterly. “I haven’t the proper kind of shoulder on me for _your_ variety of consolation.” “Thrue ye have it, Agnes O’Mahony,” Mrs. Fergus came back, with her hand on the latch. “An’ by the same token, thim shoulders were small consolation to you yourself, till you got your nun’s vail to hide ’em!” When she had flounced her way out, the mother superior remained standing, her gaze bent upon the floor. “Sister Ellen,” she said at last, “me powers are failing me. ’T is time I laid down me burden. For the first time in me life I was unayqual to her impiddence.”