Read Our Lady of Pain for Free Online Page B

spared a visit from you. You and Miss Levine are to leave tomorrow for Saint Mary’s Convent in Oxford. It is an Anglican convent and the mother superior, Lady Janus, has kindly agreed to take you both for a year and school you in humility and obedience.”
    Rose looked desperately at Harry. He looked away. He thought that Rose would at least be safe until he solved this murder.
    “What if I don’t go?” demanded Rose.
    “You will obey me, your father, for once in your life.”
    Daisy slipped out of the room and ran downstairs and out to where Becket was sitting in the motor car. “The earl is sending me and Rose into a convent for a year,” said Daisy. “You’ve got to help me!”
    “I didn’t know they were Catholics.” “It’s an Anglican convent. Look, let’s just get married.” “On what? I’m not read yet, Daisy.”
    Daisy turned on her heel and said over her shoulder. “I’ll never forgive you for this.”
    Rose pleaded throughout the rest of the day in vain. “We could run away again,” said Daisy that evening.
    “Where to? Harry, Captain Cathcart, would find us and drag us back. I hate that man. He sat there and did nothing. Not one word of protest.”
    Along the corridor, the earl walked into his wife’s bedroom. “Thank God, that’s settled,” he said, rubbing his chubby little hands. “We won’t need to worry about her for a year. We’ve been too soft on her.”
    Lady Polly was seated at her dressing table creaming her face. “I was thinking, my dear, that’s it’s very cold in London, and with Rose gone and in safe hands, we really do not want to stay here. What about Monte Carlo?”
    “Great idea. I’ll get Jarvis to make the arrangements.”
    Rose, being undressed for bed by her maid, stiffened as she heard her father’s voice raised in song echoing along the corridor outside.
    “ As I walk along the Bois Bou-long ,
    With an independent air ,
    You can hear the girls declare ,
    ‘ He must be a millionaire ’;
    You can hear them sigh and wish to die ,
    You can see them wink the other eye
    At the man who broke the Bank at Monte Carlo .”
     
    She had never felt so alone in all her life.
    Daisy read a great number of cheap romances. Unlike Rose, she had comforted herself with the thought that the captain would ride to the rescue. Even when their luggage was loaded into the carriage, even when the carriage moved off, she was sure they would be saved at the last minute.
    It was only when the great iron gates of the convent were shut behind them and she saw the stern figure of the mother superior standing on the steps did she realize there was no hope at all and began to cry with noisy abandon.
    “Pull yourself together,” hissed Rose.
    “Welcome,” said the mother superior, Lady Janus. “What a great deal of luggage!”
    Daisy scrubbed her eyes defiantly with a handkerchief and asked, “Will I have to dress like a bleedin’ penguin?”
    “I will have to talk to you later, young lady, about your very bad manners. Follow me.”
    The mother superior led the way along several dark corridors. It was evident to Rose, from what she could see of the architecture, that the convent had been built in the Gothic style in the middle of the last century. She remembered reading that there had been some opposition to Oxford Anglicanism, claiming it was too “high” and drifting back to the Catholic Church.
    “You will share a room,” said the mother superior, opening a heavy oak door. “As laywomen, you will not wear the habit, but you will select from your luggage your plainest clothes. I will leave you to unpack. Sister Agnes will be your mentor. She will be with you shortly to take you an a tour of the convent and explain your duties to you.”
    She retreated. Rose and Daisy looked at each other and then around the narrow room. It was furnished with two hard narrow beds. Between the beds was a table on which lay a large Bible. The latticed window let in very little light.