"We all know that you have always been the Mother's favourite." There was a little cool inflection of contempt in Greta's high, sweet, birdlike tones that had been lacking before. "And she is the niece of a great English Cardinal, and the sister of a Duchess and a Princess, and her step-brother is an Earl." The inflection added for Greta: "_And yet she turns to the charity child!_"
"It is because she is perfect in the way of humility. She is beyond all pride ... greater than all prejudice ... she has been more to me than I can say, since she and Sister Ignatius and Sister Tobias found me on the veld seven years ago, when they were trekking up from Natal to join the Sisters who were already working here."
Greta's face dimpled, and the bright, cold eyes grew greedy again. There was a romance, after all.
"My gracious! How did you get there? Did your people lose you, or had you run away from home?"
The delicate wild-rose colour sank out of Lynette's cheeks. Her eyes sank under those bold, curious, blue ones of Greta's. She said, with a painful effort:
"I--had run away from the place that was called my home. I don't remember ever having lived anywhere else before."
"It was a--dreadful place." A little convulsive shudder rippled through the girl's slight frame. Little points of moisture showed upon the delicate white temples, where clung the little stray rings and tendrils of the red-brown hair. "I wore worse rags than the children at the native kraals, and was worse fed. I scrubbed floors, and fetched water, and was beaten every day. Then"--she drew a deep, quivering breath--"I ran away--and--and ran until I could run no more, and fell down.... I don't remember being picked up. I woke up one day here at the Convent; and I was in bed, and my hair was cut short, and there was ice upon my head. I said, 'Where am I?' and the Mother-Superior stooped down and looked into my eyes, and said, 'You are at home.' And the Convent has been my home ever since, and I hope with all my heart it always will be!"
Greta descended from the desk. She drew her embroidered cambric skirts primly about her, and said in a shocked voice:
"And I asked you to visit me--to come and stay with us at our place near Johannesburg--you who are not even respectable!"