Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida'.djvu/141

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THE WISDOM OF MOTHER VERONICA.
133

doune, impatiently. "Why have withheld from me that she——"

"My son, I will tell all I know if you do not hasten me," pleaded Mother Veronica. "When the Salutation was over. Sister Eunice came and told me that a lady sought to see me; I bade her bring her here, and it was here I saw her—the woman of your picture, with those deep marvellous eyes, and that hair which is like light. Ah! how wicked it is that a mere earthly beauty of form can touch us and win us as can never all the spiritual beauty of the saints. One sees at once that she is of noble rank, and young, but she is a woman of the world—too much a woman of the world! She apologised to me with a proud grace that the base born never can have, my son (though we ought to believe that the Father has made all equal), and said she came to ask about a stranger who had been succoured by us in the autumn, and been cured of dangerous wounds; had he suffered much—had he been wholly restored? Then I knew that what we had deemed delirium had been the truth, and that this was she who had saved you; but I said nothing of that, only answered her fully of your illness and of your cure, and then added to her, as it were carelessly, that in your convalescence you had painted