The servant brought up the tea and went downstairs. Then there was a complete silence for some minutes, each waiting for another to speak first. Catherine was staring fixedly into the fire, with a look on her face that awed the two women, they imagined that some great calamity must of a certainty have befallen the Cause. At last Sister Eliza spoke, she could bear the suspense no longer. "Sister Catherine, you say you have summoned us to discuss some important matter?" The Chief looked up, and replied with a forced calmness in her voice: "Yes; I wish to put before you the conduct of one of the Sisterhood--of Mary Grimm, in fact." "I suspected her!" put in Susan eagerly, the shadow of fear passing from her face; she had not forgotten her hatred for Mary, though so far she had found no opportunity for gratifying it. "Mary wishes to leave us," continued the Chief. "So I suspected," broke in again the exultant voice of Susan. "I have discovered that she has formed an attachment with a man." "I knew it, and you have called us here to decide what shall be done with the traitor?" "She is not a traitor yet." Sister Eliza spoke next. "But if you do not take care, she soon will be a traitor, Sister Catherine. I too have heard something of this before; she is in love with that doctor. You should not have allowed her to go to his sister's house at Farnham. I thought at the time it was very imprudent." "It was the inevitable, Sister Eliza--the girl was dying," replied the Chief. "It would have been safer had she died." "Perhaps so; but the question before is, what is to be done now?" Catherine spoke sharply. She was considerably nettled at the cool and unfeeling way in which the sisters entered on the discussion, though she knew that it was unreasonable on her part to expect anything else. It was Susan's turn to speak, and she did so in an irritatingly calm and business-like voice. "I can only see one answer to that question." "Well!" "Mary must be put out of the way." A long pause followed; the three women sipped their strong tea in silence. Then Catherine said, "That is dangerous--now is it necessary?" Sister Eliza raised her eyes in wonder. What was the Chief hesitating about? what doubt could there be? "Necessary! of course," said Susan. "We cannot allow her to leave us and betray us to her lover the doctor." "She is no traitor," exclaimed Catherine indignantly; "whatever happened she would never betray us."