“But you are so good. . . .”

“No, I am not good.  I am very wicked.  I should never have thought of being a nun, but I’m glad now that I’m only a novice and have never taken the vows.”

After that she told me to go to sleep, and then she kissed me again, and I thought she was going to cry, but she rose hurriedly and left the room.

Next morning after the getting-up bell had been rung, and I had roused myself to full consciousness, I found that four or five nuns were standing together near the door of the dormitory talking about something that had happened during the night—­Sister Angela had gone!

Half an hour afterwards when full of this exciting event, the girls went bursting down to the Meeting Room they found the nuns in great agitation over an incident of still deeper gravity—­Father Giovanni also had disappeared!

A convent school is like a shell on the shore of a creek, always rumbling with the rumour of the little sea it lives under; and by noon the girls, who had been palpitating with curiosity, thought they knew everything that had happened—­how at four in the morning Father Giovanni and Sister Angela had been seen to come out of the little door which connected the garden with the street; how at seven they had entered a clothing emporium in the Corso, where going in at one door as priest and nun they had come out at another as ordinary civilians; how at eight they had taken the first train to Civita Vecchia, arriving in time to catch a steamer sailing at ten, and how they were now on their way to England.

By some mysterious instinct of their sex the girls had gathered with glistening eyes in front of the chaplain’s deserted quarters, where Alma leaned against the wall with her insteps crossed and while the others talked she smiled, as much as to say, “I told you so.”

As for me I was utterly wretched, and being now quite certain that I was the sole cause of Sister Angela’s misfortune, I was sitting under the tree in the middle of the garden, when Alma, surrounded by her usual group of girls, came down on me.

“What’s this?” she said.  “Margaret Mary crying?  Feeling badly for Sister Angela, is she?  Why, you little silly, you needn’t cry for her.  She’s having the time of her life, she is!”

At this the girls laughed and shuddered, as they used to do when Alma told them stories, but just at that moment the nun with the stern face (she was the Mother of the Novices) came up and said, solemnly: 

“Alma Lier, the Reverend Mother wishes to speak to you.”

“To me?” said Alma, in a tone of surprise, but at the next moment she went off jauntily.

Hours passed and Alma did not return, and nothing occurred until afternoon “rosary,” when the Mother of the Novices came again and taking me by the hand said: 

“Come with me, my child.”

I knew quite well where we were going to, and my lip was trembling when we entered the Reverend Mother’s room, for Alma was there, sitting by the stove, and close beside her, with an angry look, was the stout lady in furs whom I had seen in the carriage at the beginning of the holidays.