Pah!" And she polished the chimney with a sudden
vigorous jerk which threatened destruction.
They were rebellious prayers that the red mouth murmured that
night, and a restless figure that tossed on the hard dormitory
bed. Sister Dominica called from her couch to know if Sister
Josepha were ill.
"No," was the somewhat short response; then a muttered, "Why
can't they let me alone for a minute? That pale-eyed Sister
Dominica never sleeps; that's why she is so ugly."
About fifteen years before this night some one had brought to the
orphan asylum connected with this convent, du Sacre Coeur, a
round, dimpled bit of three-year-old humanity, who regarded the
world from a pair of gravely twinkling black eyes, and only took
a chubby thumb out of a rosy mouth long enough to answer in
monosyllabic French. It was a child without an identity; there
was but one name that any one seemed to know, and that, too, was
vague,--Camille.
She grew up with the rest of the waifs; scraps of French and
American civilization thrown together to develop a seemingly
inconsistent miniature world. Mademoiselle Camille was a queen
among them, a pretty little tyrant who ruled the children and
dominated the more timid sisters in charge.
One day an awakening came. When she was fifteen, and almost
fully ripened into a glorious tropical beauty of the type that
matures early, some visitors to the convent were fascinated by
her and asked the Mother Superior to give the girl into their
keeping.
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