A Sister passed through the dormitory on a visit of inspection.  Alicia bowed sweetly and the Sister inclined herself briefly with a cloistered smile.  As she disappeared, Hilda threw a black skirt over her head, making a veil of it flowing backward, and rendered the visit, the noiseless measured, step, the little deprecating movements of inquiry, the benevolent recognition of a visitor from a world where people carried parasols and wore spotted muslins.  She even effaced herself at the door on the track of the other to make it perfect, and came tack in the happy expansion of an artistic effort to find Alicia’s regard penetrated with the light of a new conviction.

“Hilda,” she said, “I should like to know what this last year has really been to you.”

“It has been very valuable,” Miss Howe replied.  Then she turned quickly away to hang up the black petticoat, and stood like that, shaking out its folds, so that Alicia might not see anything curious in her face as she heard her own words and understood what they meant.

A probationer came rapidly along the dormitory to where Hilda stood.  She had the olive cheeks and the liquid eyes of the country; her lips were parted in a smile.

“Miss Howe,” she said in the quick, clicking syllables of her race, “Sister Margaret wishes you to come immediately to the surgical ward.  A case has come in, and Miss Gonsalvez is there, but Sister Margaret will not be bothered with Miss Gonsalvez.  She says you are due by right in five minutes”—­the messenger’s smile broadened irresponsibly, and she put a fondling touch upon Hilda’s apron string—­“so will you please to make haste?”

“What’s the case?” asked Hilda, “I hope it isn’t another ship’s-hold accident.”  But Alicia, a shade paler than before, put up her hand.  “Wait till I’m gone,” she said, and went quickly.  The girl had opened her lips, however, but to say that she didn’t know, she had only been seized to take the message, though it must be something serious, since they had sent for both the resident surgeons.

CHAPTER XXX.

Doctor Livingstone’s concern was personal, that was plain in the way he stood looking at the floor of the corridor with his hands in his pockets, before Hilda reached him.  Regret was written all over the lines of his pausing figure, with the compressed irritation which saved that feeling, in the Englishman’s way, from being too obvious.

“This is a bad business, Miss Howe.”

“I’ve just come over—­I haven’t heard.  Who is it?”

“It’s my cousin, poor chap—­Arnold, the padre.  He’s been badly knifed in the bazaar.”

The news passed over her and left her looking with a curious face at chance.  It was lifted a little, with composed lips, and eyes which refused to be taken by surprise.  There was inquiry in them, also a defence, a retreat.  Chance looking back saw an invincible silent readiness and a pallor which might be that of any woman.  But the doctor was also looking, so she said, “That is very sad,” and moved near enough to the wall to put her hand against it.  She was not faint, but the wall was a fact on which one could, for the moment, rely.