excursions, Clarence felt for it the profound indifference of a boy who,
in the intermediate temperate zone of fifteen years, thinks that he
is no longer young and romantic! He was passing them with a careless
glance, when a pair of deep violet eyes caught his own under the broad
shade of a coquettishly beribboned hat, even as it had once looked at
him from the depths of a calico sunbonnet. Susy! He started, and would
have spoken; but with a quick little gesture of caution and a meaning
glance at the two nuns who walked at the head and foot of the file,
she indicated him to follow. He did so at a respectful distance, albeit
wondering. A little further on Susy dropped her handkerchief, and was
obliged to dart out and run back to the end of the file to recover it.
But she gave another swift glance of her blue eyes as she snatched it up
and demurely ran back to her place. The procession passed on, but when
Clarence reached the spot where she had paused he saw a three-cornered
bit of paper lying in the grass. He was too discreet to pick it up while
the girls were still in sight, but continued on, returning to it later.
It contained a few words in a schoolgirl's hand, hastily scrawled in
pencil: "Come to the south wall near the big pear-tree at six."
Delighted as Clarence felt, he was at the same time embarrassed. He
could not understand the necessity of this mysterious rendezvous.
He knew that if she was a scholar she was under certain conventual
restraints; but with the privileges of his position and friendship with
his teachers, he believed that Father Sobriente would easily procure him
an interview with this old play-fellow, of whom he had often spoken,
and who was, with himself, the sole survivor of his tragical past. And
trusted as he was by Sobriente, there was something in this clandestine
though innocent rendezvous that went against his loyalty. Nevertheless,
he kept the appointment, and at the stated time was at the south wall
of the convent, over which the gnarled boughs of the distinguishing
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