From beneath her heavy black hood, Mother’s meek shy eyes searched the non-committal countenance before her, and found it about as satisfactorily responsive as some stone sphinx half-sepulchred in Egyptic sand.

“May I ask, sir, if you are at all related to Regina?”

“Not even remotely; am merely her mother’s legal counsellor, and the agent appointed by her to transfer the child to different guardianship.  I repeat, I deem the change inexpedient, but discretionary powers have not been conferred on me.  She seems rather a mature bit of royalty for ten years of age.  Is the intellectual machinery at all in consonance with the refined perfection of the external physique?”

“She has a fine active brain, clear and quick, and is very well advanced in her studies, for she is fond of her books.  Better than all, her heart is noble, and generous, and she is a conscientious little thing, never told a story in her life; but at times we have had great difficulty in controlling her will, which certainly is the most obstinate I have ever encountered.”

“She evidently does not suggest wax, save in the texture of her fine skin, and one rarely finds in a child’s face so much of steel as is ambushed in the creases of the rose leaves that serve her as lips.  If her will matches her mother’s, this little one certainly was not afflicted with a misnomer at her baptism.”  He rose, looked at his watch, and walked across the room as if to inspect a Pieta that hung upon the wall.  Unwilling to conclude an interview which had yielded her no information, Mother Aloysius patiently awaited the result of the examination, but he finally went to the window, and a certain unmistakable expression of countenance which can be compared only to a locking of mouth and eyes, warned her that he was alert and inflexible.  With a smothered sigh she left her seat.

“As you seem impatient, Mr. Palma, I will endeavour to hasten the preparations for your departure.”

“If you please, Mother; I shall feel indebted to your kind consideration.”

Nearly an hour elapsed ere she returned leading Regina, and as the latter stood between Mother and Sister Angela, with a cluster of fresh fragrant lilies in her hand, and her tender face blanched and tearful, it seemed to the lawyer as if indeed the pet ewe lamb were being led away from peaceful flowery pastures, from the sweet sanctity of the cloistral fold, out through thorny devious paths where Temptations prowl wolf-fanged, or into fierce conflicts that end in the social shambles, those bloodless abattoirs where malice mangles humanity.  How many verdure-veiled, rose-garlanded pitfalls yawned in that treacherous future now stretching before her like summer air, here all gold and blue, yonder with purple glory crowning the dim far away?  Intuitively she recognized the fact that she was confronting the first cross roads in her hitherto monotonous life, and a vague dread flitted like ill-omened birds before her, darkening her vision.