Gratia's Trials — page 214: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

GRATIA’S TRIALS. 205 ‘‘T will go to her at once,” said Colonel Falconer, rising. As he entered the sick-room, where the darkened blinds and the faint odor of disinfectants too plainly proclaimed the pres- ence of disease, a slight figure stood opposite to him, looking all the slighter from the black dress she wore. Her back was toward him as he entered, but she turned, almost at the same instant, and he found himself standing face to face with Gratia Kem pfield. CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE DARK IS MADE LIGHT. It is only necessary for us to go back a few days to the frosty February twilight in which Gratia Kempfield fled so wildly from what seemed to her the avenging Nemesis of some hideous fatality. The sullen roar of the ice-freighted East River seemed _ to her like a friendly, inviting voice; the chill rush of the blast a hand laid kindly on hers, drawing her toward the misty con- fines of the great unseen. For an instant she sank rather than knelt on the ice-glazed surface of a huge rock which had rolled to the very edge of the tides, with a dim idea of murmuring some prayer, and uttered aloud the sweet, familiar words : | : ‘¢ ¢Our Father which art in heaven.’ Before she could speak the next phrase of her childhood's prayer, a soft, warm hand fell on hers. She started with a low cry, and saw, standing close beside her, a woman dressed in the peculiar black robes of the Sisterhood of St. Hildegarde. ‘What is it, my poor child?” Sister Madeline asked, kindly. ‘‘Ts it sin, or sorrow? Know that neither is beyond the help and pardon of the Father whose name you have just spoken,” Gratia tried to break away from the mild, detaining grasp. ‘‘Let me go!” she cried; ‘‘let me die! Only one brief Gomicbooks (E(0) m