Thunder On The Right by Mary Stewart Read Free Book Online Page A

only she'd mind her own business and------" But here
    Sister Louisa rather belatedly recollected herself. She went on, with the cheery malice now expunged from her voice. "She came over here in the Spanish troubles—many years ago now. Her family were something big, old as the hills and very rich, sort of near-royalty, I always understood. . . . She has a name as long as your arm, de something el something y something else—you know the kind of rigmarole? Well, they ran into trouble and lost everything. ... I never heard the rights of it because she's not the one to talk to such as me, but anyway she got out of Spain in some sort of after-dark way, and came to us. The Reverend Mother had known her folks, years before, and I think I heard tell that Dona Francisca's family had endowed our Order heavily a long time ago. Maybe that's why the Mother let her stay, though she'd never let her take her vows, and I heard tell she's been mad keen to do that ever since she came."
    Jennifer, interested in spite of herself, asked, "And in all that time she's not—what's the phrase?—taken Orders?"
    "Professed." Sister Louisa gave her singularly unmonastic chortle. "No, she hasn't.
    It's a queer thing, that, and of course I don't know the rights of it, but everybody says"— again that twinkling gossip's glance sideways—"everybody says the Reverend Mother won't hear of it, for all she lets her run our business affairs, and for all she's such a good teacher. No vocation. At least that ," added Sister Louisa, punching another plant into place, "is what they say."
    Jennifer, recalling the impression of smoldering personality that she had glimpsed behind that still patrician mask and hooded eyes, thought she could understand the obviously deliberate usurping of the Reverend Mother's position in such matters as her own interview this afternoon. And the contrived effect of the Spanish woman's costume—that was surely deliberate too? What was perhaps surprising was that such a woman should be content to stay in such a tiny and isolated place, but possibly her family connections explained that. . . . Jennifer found herself remembering suddenly that she had several times called Dona Francisca "Sister,"
    and had not been corrected.
    Sister Louisa was watching her with a shrewd blue eye. "You'll be thinking I'm a wicked old gossip, and perhaps I am. But if my chatter takes your mind off your troubles it'll do more good than harm. Are you feeling better, child?"
    "Yes, thank you, Sister. I—I honestly don't think I've really taken it in yet. I don't find it awfully easy to believe that Gillian ... I mean," said Jennifer not very coherently, "it's different when you see it happen yourself, isn't it?"
    "I know. Dona Francisca did tell you all about it, though, didn't she?"
    "As a matter of fact she told me very little—or perhaps I wasn't in a fit state to grasp everything. I know that there was an accident, and that my cousin came here in a bad storm, and fell ill and died here."
    "Eh, dear, yes." The grubby hand made a quick gesture toward the silver cross. "It was a terrible storm we had that Monday night. It's not for nothing that we call this the Valley of the Storms." She cocked an inquiring eye at Jennifer. "You're English?"
    "Yes."
    "With a French cousin?**
    "She was English, too."
    The nun turned a surprised face to her. "English? But she spoke------"
    "Oh, yes." Jennifer made the explanation again. "She spoke like a Frenchwoman.
    Her mother was French, you see, and she herself married a Frenchman. But her father was English, and she came from the north of England."
    "I see." The old nun nodded. "But it's still strange that she didn't speak of these things—not even of her husband."
    "He died a while ago."
    "Ah, I see. But you—did she know you were coming here?"
    "Yes, indeed. She wrote herself to ask me to come. She recommended a hotel in Gavarnie, and said she would see if I could be housed for a little while here, at the