The nun looked at the old priest with round eyes of wonder.
"Father Quentin, what strange thing is this?" she uttered, fearfully.
"Ask me not to explain it, my good daughter; it is a manifestation of
psychic power beyond human explanation," he replied, hastily quitting
the room to seek the mother superior.
As a result of his interview with her, he was soon on his way toward
Esplanade Street and Mme. Lorraine.
Seldom had the footsteps of such a holy man crossed the threshold of
the gay and volatile French woman. She grew pale through her rouge and
her powder when she read the name upon his card, and sent word that she
was not at home.
He told the little page that he would wait until madame returned, and
took a seat in the quiet salon.
Angry and baffled, Mme. Lorraine came down to him.
_"Bénedicité_, daughter," said Father Quentin; but she looked at him
inquiringly, without bending her lovely head.
"I have come to see Eliot Van Zandt, who lies wounded in your house,"
he said, boldly.
She gave a quick, nervous start, perfectly perceptible to his eyes, and
her glance sought his, full of frightened inquiry.
"The girl was right; he is hidden here," he thought, with fluttering
pulses; but aloud he said, with pretended authority and outward
calmness:
"Lead me to his presence; I must see the young man at once."
She had recovered her calmness as quickly as she had lost it.
"Holy father, you amaze me!" she exclaimed, haughtily. "The man is
not here. I read in my paper only this morning that he had most
mysteriously disappeared. But come, I see you do not believe me. You
shall search my house."
He was a little staggered by her assurance.
"I do not wish to seem intrusive," he said; "but my informant was very
positive."
Then he mentally shook himself. After all, he had no authority for his
assertion, except the strange words of a girl who had just come out of
a trance-like sleep--a girl who might simply have dreamed it all.
But he followed her all over the pretty, elegantly appointed house, the
little page carrying the keys and unlocking door after door until he
was sure that not an apartment in the house remained unvisited.
"You have a servant-woman, Mima," he said to her, as they descended the
stairs.
"Yes," she replied; "Mima is in the kitchen, preparing luncheon. You
shall see her, too, holy father."
Mima, at work over a dainty luncheon, bowed her head grimly to receive
his blessing.
"You have been nursing a sick, a wounded man, Monsieur Van Zandt," he
said, trying to take her by surprise; but she did not betray as much
self-consciousness as her mistress.
"The holy father mistakes; I am a cook, not a nurse," she replied,
coolly.
And so he came away baffled, after all.
Mme. Lorraine pressed a gold piece excitedly into the hand of the
little page.
"Follow the good priest, and come back and tell me where he lives," she
exclaimed.
* * * * *
Father Quentin went his way immediately back to the convent, with
the story of his disappointment, and concluded that Little Nobody's
dream had been simply a dream, with nothing supernatural about it. The
light that had seemed to shine momentarily on the mystery of Eliot Van
Zandt's fate went out in rayless darkness.
For the girl, she grew better and stronger daily, and submitted, with
child-like patience, to the innumerable questions the good sisters
asked her of her past life. They were shocked when she told them the
story of her life with Mme. Lorraine, the life that she had counted of
so little value that she had never even given her little white slave a
name.
They went to Father Quentin with the shocking story--that the girl had
no name, and that that heartless woman had called her Vixen, Savage,
Baggage, Nobody, by turns. She must be baptized immediately.
The good priest was as heartily scandalized as one could wish. He chose
a name at once for their charge. It was the sweet, simple one, Marie.
And that same day, in the little chapel, surrounded by the tearful
nuns, Little Nobody stood before the altar and received the baptismal
name, Marie.
The next day she was formally introduced into the convent school, which
consisted of twenty young ladies, all boarders. She was cautioned to
say nothing of her past life to her schoolmates. The priest said that
she was a ward of his, and he wished the pupils to be very kind to
Mlle. Marie, who, through the peculiar circumstances of her life, had
not received necessary mental culture, and must now begin the rudiments
of her education.
For downright, honest, uncompromising curiosity and rudeness, no
class of human beings transcends the modern school-girl. The pupils
of Le Bon Berger immediately set themselves to work to torture the
new scholar--the little ignoramus, as they dubbed her. Such ignorance
as this they had never encountered before. They teased and chaffed
her in their audacious fashion, and speedily made her understand her
humiliation--a great girl of fifteen or sixteen beginning to learn her
alphabet like a child of five years!
She was used to being chaffed and despised, poor Little Nobody! It
was the life at Mme. Loraine's over again, and the great dark eyes
flashed in sullen scorn as they did then, and the small hands clinched
themselves at her sides in impotent pain.
"I shall run away from here!" she thought, bitterly.
They had one habit with which they daily demonstrated to her their
superior wisdom. At recess they would assemble in a great group and
read aloud from the daily newspaper. Sitting apart under the great
trees of the convent garden, the new pupil listened, against her will,
to every word, and so there came to her one day, through this strange
means, the news of Eliot Van Zandt's strange disappearance from the
ranks of the living.
With dilated eyes, parted lips and wildly throbbing heart she listened,
and when the reader's voice came to an end, the group was electrified
by a spring and a rush and a vision of golden hair flying on the wind,
as the new pupil flew, with the speed of an Atalanta, into the presence
of the mother superior.
"What is the matter with Mademoiselle Marie? has she got a fit?"
exclaimed the merry, mischievous school-girls.