d they will fetch you away."

"But there is no one there now, except Abby, and she is lame and very
old. Father is not in town. He will not be back until night, and I
can perfectly well go home alone!" I was beginning to feel desperate,
as I thought I never should get out of the place.

She smiled and said, "Well, we will see! Give me your father's name."
She looked surprised when she heard it and not quite as if she believed
me, but all she said was, "Now you must lie down and rest a little
while before you go out."

I protested that I did not feel tired, and indeed my anxiety to get
away had wiped out all memory of my bruises. But in the end I had to
follow the round-faced nun up the bare, cement stairway to another
small room. It seemed strange after the luxurious glooms of the
Spanish Woman's house, to be in this bare, whitewashed place, where all
the light fell unobstructed through little, narrow windows placed high
up in the walls. There were no mirrors here, not one, to reflect one's
figure; and it was only when I had taken off my hat that I discovered
what a wreck it was, crushed absurdly out of shape; and my hair was
half down. The nun helped me to unwind and brush it out, and I heard
her murmuring at my back, "When I was young my hair was as long as
this."

And then she coaxed me to lie down on a little bed. I felt her cover
me up; but when she tried to make me drink something from a glass a
hideous memory sprang in my mind, and I had struck and knocked the
glass out of her hand before I could think what I was doing. I heard
her muttering anxiously to herself as she picked the pieces up, and
then I was left alone.

With confused puzzles moving through my mind I lay there, tense,
feverish, tossing, each moment expecting some one to come and tell me I
could go home. Finally, I seemed at last really to be going. The only
trouble was that the nuns told me I could not leave unless I left as a
bride, and they had no satin and no orange flowers.

I was startled out of this fancy by voices sounding loud upon the edge
of my dream. One said angrily, "In the first place you ought never to
have taken her to that infernal house, either for the sake of getting
evidence or any other thing." The second retorted, "Well, I wanted to
keep her out of the whole business. It was you who insisted on
dragging her in; and once you get into this sort of thing difficult
situations often present themselves."

My e