ows."

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