Little Nobody. Alex. McVeigh Miller
wildly. "Oh, it can not be true! I shall find her awake and waiting for me, the poor lamb! Madame Lorraine only invented that story to torture me."
He spoke feverishly to the driver:
"Faster, faster!"
The man replied, in a conciliatory tone:
"Monsieur, I dare not. I should be arrested for fast driving, and your speed would be hindered, not helped, by such a course."
He knew that it was true, and with a groan sunk back in his seat and resigned himself with what patience he could to the moderate pace of the horses. It seemed hours, although it was but thirty minutes, before they drew up again before the dark, grim building where he had left his charge the night before.
The janitor admitted him without any parley this time; but Carmontelle was so eager that he did not notice the solemn, sympathetic look with which the man regarded him. He rushed without delay to the presence of the mother superior.
When she saw him, her countenance expressed the greatest dismay. She crossed herself piously and ejaculated, sorrowfully:
"Oh, monsieur, monsieur, you have come at last!"
"Madame, holy mother!" he cried, agitatedly, and paused, unable to proceed further. Something in her face and voice filled him with dread.
"Oh, my son!" she uttered, sorrowfully, and speech, too, seemed to fail her. She regarded him in a pathetic silence mixed with deep pity.
He made a great effort to speak, to overcome the horror that bound him hand and foot. A terrible fear was upon him. What if she had not wakened yet?
With that awful thought, he gasped and spoke:
"Where is she?"
"Oh, mon Dieu! oh, holy Mother of Jesus, comfort him!" cried the good nun, piously. She advanced and touched him compassionately. "God help you, my poor son. She—she—has not awakened—yet."
He turned his pale, frightened face toward her.
"She sleeps?" he questioned, eagerly; and with a holy compassion in her trembling voice, she replied:
"Yes, my son, she sleeps—in Jesus."
"Dead?" he almost shrieked, and she answered, solemnly:
"Yes."
She thought he was about to faint, his face grew so pale and his form reeled so unsteadily; but he threw out one hand and caught the back of a chair to sustain himself, while a hollow groan came from his lips:
"Too late!"
With tears in her eyes, the good nun continued:
"The little girl never awakened from the deep sleep in which you brought her here. We made every effort to arouse her, but all in vain. She sunk deeper and deeper into lethargy, her breathing growing fainter and fainter, and at last it ceased altogether."
"When?" he questioned, huskily.
"Three hours ago," she replied.
If it had not been for her sacred presence, Carmontelle would have broken into passionate execrations of the wicked woman who had caused the death of that sweet young girl. As it was, he stood before her dazed and silent, almost stunned by the calamities that had befallen him since last night.
Van Zandt had mysteriously disappeared, and Little Nobody was dead. The one, he feared and dreaded, had been murdered by Remond in his fury; the other lay dead, the victim of Mme. Lorraine's cruel vengeance.
"Come," said the nun, breaking in on his bitter thoughts; "she lies in the chapel. You will like to look at her, monsieur."
He followed her silently, and the low, monotonous sound of the chant for the dead came to his ears like a knell as they went on along the narrow hall to the darkened chapel, where the weeping nuns lay prostrate before the altar, mumbling over the prayers for the dead, and an old, white-haired priest in flowing robes bent over his book. Carmontelle saw none of these. He had eyes for nothing but that black-draped coffin before the altar, with wax-candles burning at head and foot, shedding a pale, sepulchral light on that fair young face and form that such a little while ago had been full of life, and health, and vigor.
He stood like one turned to stone—speechless, breathless—gazing at that exquisitely lovely face, so faultlessly molded, and so beautiful even in the strange pallor of death, with the dark lashes lying so heavily against the cheeks and the lips closed in such a strange, sweet calm.
His heart swelled with love, and grief, and pity. Poor child! she had had such a strange, desolate life, and she had died without a name and without a friend, save for him who stood beside her now, his face pale and moved, as he looked upon her lying like a broken lily in her coffin, with the strange, weird light sifting through the stained-glass windows on her calm face, and the monotonous chants and prayers making a solemn murmur through the vaulted chapel.
"Is it death or heavy sleep?" he asked himself, with a sudden throb of hope; and he touched reverently the little hands that were crossed over a white lily the nuns had lovingly placed there. Alas! they were icy cold! His hope fled. "Too late! too late! If they find Remond, it will be all in vain," he muttered, and the mother superior looked at him inquiringly.
Impulsively he told her all, and the nuns, at their prayers, murmured aves and paters more softly, that they might listen; the old priest, with his head bent over his book, lost not a word. It was a romance from that wicked outer world from which the convent walls shut them in, a breath of life and passion from the "bewildering masquerade" of existence, where
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