A crash of thunder followed; and, at that moment, the door of the chamber bursting open, old Mary Antony, breathless, stumbled in, forgetting to knock, omitting to kneel, not waiting leave to speak, both hands outstretched, one tightly clenched, the other holding the great key: "Oh, Reverend Mother!" she gasped.
Then the stern displeasure on that loved face silenced her.

She dropped upon her knees, ashen and trembling.
Now the Prioress held personal fear in high scorn; and if, after ninety years' experience of lightning and thunder, Mary Antony was not better proof against their terrors, the Prioress felt scant patience with her.
She spoke sternly.
"How now, Mary Antony! Why this unseemly haste?
Why this rush into my presence; no knock; no pause until I bid thee enter?
Is the storm-fiend at thy heels?
Now shame upon thee!" For only answer, Mary Antony opened her clenched hand: whereupon twenty peas fell pattering to the floor, chasing one another across the Reverend Mother's cell.
The Prioress frowned, growing suddenly weary of these games with peas.
"Have the Ladies returned ?" she asked.
Mary Antony grovelled nearer, let fall the key, and seized the robe of the Prioress with both hands, not to carry it to her lips, but to cling to it as if for protection.
With the clang of the key on the flags, a twisted blade of fire rent the sky.
As the roar which followed rolled away, echoed and re-echoed by distant hills, the old lay-sister lifted her face.
Her lips moved, her gums rattled; the terror in her eyes pleaded for help.
This was the moment when it dawned on the Prioress that there was more here than fear of a storm.
Stooping she laid her hands firmly, yet with kindness in their strength, on the shaking shoulders.
"What is it, dear Antony ?" she said.
"Twenty White Ladies went," whispered the old lay-sister.

"I counted them.

Twenty White Ladies went; but----" "Well ?" "_Twenty-one_ returned," chattered Mary Antony, and hid her face in the Reverend Mother's robe.
Two flashes, with their accompanying peals of thunder passed, before the Prioress moved or spoke.

Then raising Mary Antony she placed her in a chair, disengaged her robe from the shaking hands, passed out into the cell passage, and herself sounded the call to silence and prayer.
Returning to her cell she shut the door, poured out a cordial and put it to the trembling lips of Mary Antony.