But when Marcelle was at length separated from Eileen by a suspicious management, a much more breathless plan was necessary.  For Marcelle would deposit the Doherty letter in Eileen’s compartment in the curtained row of little niches—­where one kept one’s work-bag, atlas, and other educational reserves—­or Eileen would slip the reply into Marcelle’s, and there it would lie, exposed to inspectorial ransacking, till such times as Eileen or Marcelle could transfer it to her bosom.  Poor Marcelle lived with her heart in her mouth, trembling, at every rustle of the curtain, for her purple ribbon.  However, luck favoured the bold, while the only bad moment in which Eileen was on the verge of detection she surmounted by a stroke of genius.

“What are you hiding there?” said the music-mistress, more sharply than she was wont to address her pet pupil.  Eileen put her hand to her bosom.  ’Twas as if she were protecting the young lieutenant from pursuing foes, and he became romantically dear to her in that perilous moment, pregnant with swift invention.

She looked round with dramatic mysteriousness.  “Hush, ma mere,” she breathed; “the Mother Superior might hear.”

“Ah, it concerns the Reverend Mother’s fete,” cried the music-mistress, falling into the trap and even saving Eileen from the lie direct.  “Good, my child,” and she smiled tenderly upon her.  For the birthday of the Lady Superior which was imminent was heralded by infinite mysteriousness.  The Reverend Mother was taken by surprise, regularly and punctually.  The girls all subscribed, their parents were invited to send plants and flowers.  The air vibrated with sublime secrecy, amid which the Reverend Mother walked guilelessly.  And when the great day came and the fete was duly sprung upon her, and the pupils all dressed in white overwhelmed her with bouquets and courtesies, how exquisite was her pleased astonishment!  That night talking was allowed in the Refectory, and how the girls jabbered!  It was like the rolling of ceaseless thunder—­one would have thought they had never talked before and never would talk again, and that they were anxious to unload themselves once for all.

“How the ordinary becomes the extraordinary by being forbidden,” philosophised Eileen.  “At the Castle I can do a hundred things, which here become enormous privileges, even if I am allowed to do them at all.  Is it so with everything they say is wrong?  Is all sin artificial, and do people sin so zestfully only because they are cramped?  Or is there a residue of real wickedness?” Thus she thought, struggling against the obsession of an inquisitorial system which merely clouded her perceptions of real right and wrong.  And alone she ate silently, a saintly figure amid the laughing, chattering crew.

She wrote her maternal admonitions to young Doherty during the preparation-time, and far keener than her sense of the lively, good-looking young officer was her sense of the double life she led through him in this otherwise monotonous Convent.  When she achieved the blue ribbon of the Enfants de Marie, for which she had worked with true devotion, it added poignancy to her pious pleasure to think that one false step in her secret life would have marred her overt life.