arning will reach me, with any instructions you may wish to
give me ... to the old address of course."

Both laughed heartily at this allusion.

"It has been great fun," she said, "fooling them all right and left.
That Dillon is suspicious though ... fine fellow ... I like him. Dicky,
... you're not jealous. What a wonder you are, dear old faithful Dicky,
my playwright, manager, lover, detective, everything to me. Well, run
along to your work. We strike for fortune this time--for fortune and for
fame. You will not see me again until you carry me down the ladder from
the convent window. What a lark! And there's money in it for you and
me."

He dared not discourage her, being too completely her slave, like wax in
her hands; and he believed, too, that her scheme of advertising the
drama of _The Escaped Nun_ would lead to splendid and profitable
notoriety. A real escape, from a city convent, before the very eyes of
respectable citizens, would ring through the country like an alarm, and
set the entire Protestant community in motion. While he feared, he was
also dazzled by the brilliancy of the scheme.

It began very well. The journals one morning announced the disappearance
of Sister Claire, and described the alarm of her friends at her failure
to return. Thereupon McMeeter raised his wonderful voice over the letter
sent him on the eve of her flight, and printed the pathetic epistle
along with his denunciation of the cowardice which had given her over to
her enemies. Later Bishop Bradford, expressing his sympathy in a speech
to the Dorcas' Society, referred to the walling up of escaped nuns
during the dark ages. A little tide of paragraphs flowed from the
papers, plaintively murmuring the one sad strain: the dear sister could
not be far distant; she might be in the city, deep in a convent dungeon;
she had belonged to the community of the Good Shepherd, whose convent
stood in Morris Street, large enough, sufficiently barred with iron to
suggest dungeons; the escaped one had often expressed her dread of
abduction; the convents ought to be examined suddenly and secretly; and
so on without end.

"What is the meaning of it?" said Monsignor. "I thought you had
extinguished her, Arthur."

"Another scheme of course. I was too merciful with her, I imagine. All
this noise seems to have one aim: to direct attention to these convents.
Now if she were hidden in any of them, and a committee should visit that
convent and find her fo