em, letting her own eyelashes close deliberately while they stared.
She moved these ladies, inspired them, carried them away, and the fact
that none of them found themselves able afterward to quote the most
pathetic passages seemed rather to add to the enthusiasm with which they
described the address. The first result was a shower of invitations to
tea, occasions when Laura was easily led into monologue. Miss Filbert
became a cult of the evangelistic drawing-rooms, and the same kind of
forbearance was extended to her little traces of earlier social
experiences as is offered, in salons of another sort, to the
eccentricities of persons of genius. Very soon other applications had to
be met and considered, and Mrs. Simpson freely admitted that Laura would
not be justified in refusing to the Methodists and Baptists what she had
given elsewhere. She reasserted her platform influence over audiences
that grew constantly larger, and her world began to revolve again in
that great relation to the infinities which it was her life to perceive
and point out. Mrs. Simpson charged her genially with having been
miserable in Plymouth until she was allowed to do good in her own way,
and saw that she had beef-tea after every occasion of doing it. She
became, in a way, of public character, and a lady journalist sent an
account of her, with a photograph, to a well-known London fashion-paper.
Perhaps the strongest effect she made was as the voice of the Purity
Association, when she delivered an address, in the picturesque costume
she had abandoned, attacking measures contemplated by Government for the
protection of the health of the army in India. This was reported in full
in the local paper, and Mr. Simpson sent a copy to Duff Lindsay, who
received it, I regret to say, with an unmistakable imprecation. But
Laura rejoiced. Deprived of her tambourine she nevertheless rejoiced
exceedingly.

CHAPTER XXV.

The Sister Superior had a long upper lip, which she was in the habit of
drawing still further down; it gave her an air of great diplomatic
caution, almost of casuistry. Her face was pale and narrow. She had eyes
that desired to be very penetrating, and a flat little stooping figure
with a suggestion of extreme neutrality within her voluminous draperies.
She carried about with her all the virtues of a monastic order, patience
was written upon her, and repression, discipline and the love of
administration, written and underlined, so that