The lane ascended and Evelyn remembered how the house stood inside a wall behind some trees, looking westward, the last southern end of the common land as the windmill was the last northern end.  There had been iron gates when a great City merchant lived in the Georgian house, which had been gradually transformed to suit the requirements of the sisters.  The melancholy little peal of the bell hanging on a loose wire sounded far away, and in the interval Evelyn noticed the large double door, from which the old green paint was peeling.  A step was heard within, and the little shutter which closed the grated peephole in the panel of the door was drawn back; the eyes and forehead band of a nun appeared for an instant in the opening; and then with a rattle of keys the door was hastily opened and the little porteress, with ruddy cheeks and a shy smile, stood aside to let Evelyn pass in.  She kissed the hand of Monsignor as he turned to her with a kindly word of salutation.  “The Reverend Mother is expecting you,” she said, her agitation being due to the importance of the occasion.

“No doubt they have been praying that I might sing well, poor dears,” Evelyn thought, as she followed the nun up the paved, covered way.  Through the iron frame-work, woven through and through with creepers and monthly roses, she caught glimpses of the partly-obliterated carriage drive, and of the neatly-kept flower beds filled with geraniums and tall, white asters.

In the hall an Adam’s ceiling radiated in graceful lines from a central medallion, and before a statue of the Sacred Heart a light was burning.  Evelyn remembered how the poor lay sisters laboured to keep the stone floor spotless, and it was into the parlour on the left, which Evelyn remembered to be the best parlour, that Sister Angela ushered them.

In the old days, before a sudden crisis on the Stock Exchange had obliged the owner to sell the house for much less than its true value to the little community of sisters of the Passion who were then seeking a permanent house, this room, round which Evelyn and the two priests were looking for seats, had been used as a morning-room.  Three long French windows looked out on the garden, and the flowers and air made it a bright, cheerful room, in spite of the severe pictures on the walls.  She recognised at once the engraving of Leonardo’s “Last Supper” which hung over the solid marble chimney piece a little above the statue of Our Lady of Lourdes and the two blue vases, and also the pale, distempered walls, and the coloured, smiling portrait of the Pope, and a full-length photograph of Cardinal Manning, signed in his own clear, neat handwriting.