Little Nobody had flung down the spelling-book that had become her
constant companion, and rushed impetuously to the presence of the good
mother superior.
In a few minutes more she had wrested from the gentle nun her whole
story, from the hour when Carmontelle had brought her to the convent
until now, when, through the fanaticism of Father Quentin, she was
as one dead to the world outside, her young life solemnly devoted to
Heaven.
The dark eyes flashed indignantly, the pale cheeks crimsoned with anger.
"How dared he?" she exclaimed.
"Daughter!"
The gently remonstrating tone had no effect on the excited girl. She
continued, angrily:
"Do you not see that it was wicked to shut me up for life? I do not
want to be a nun. I will not be a nun! I tell you frankly their pale
faces and black dresses give me the horrors! I shall leave here at once
to find the poor Yankee that was wounded in defending me. He is in
the power of Madame Lorraine, I am sure. I dreamed of him, and he was
wounded, and in the care of Mima, her servant."
The nun assured her that Father Quentin had been already to Esplanade
Street, and that Mme. Lorraine and her servant had declared their
ignorance of the journalist's whereabouts.
Mlle. Marie's lip curled in unmitigated scorn.
"As if their words could be taken for truth," she uttered, bitterly.
"Ah, I know her falsehoods too well."
The nun knew not what to do. The demand of the girl to leave the
convent frightened her. She was compelled to falter a refusal.
Then Marie flatly rebelled. Some of the spirit that had made Remond
call her a little savage flashed into her eyes, and she vowed that she
would not be detained.
The mother went hastily to call Father Quentin. He firmly refused to
grant the girl's wish. He was persuaded that to do so would be to
insure her own eternal ruin.
The passionate heart, the undisciplined temper, took fire at his flat
refusal.
To the poor girl it seemed that the whole world was arrayed against her.
Why had the old priest saved her from death if she was to be immured
forever, as in a living tomb, in this grim old convent? The sanguine
youth and hope within her rose up in passionate protest.
She pleaded, and when entreaty failed, she flung down a passionate
defiance. Go she would! Eliot Van Zandt needed her to deliver him from
Mme. Lorraine's baneful power. Should she torture him, destroy him,
while she who owed him so much forsook him? Ah, no, no!
The result was that the defiant, contumacious pupil was consigned to
solitary confinement in a cell for the remainder of the day, until she
should come to her senses and ask pardon of the priest and the good
mother superior.
She flung herself down, sobbing, on the cold stone floor, too angry to
repeat the prayers Father Quentin had recommended her to address to
the saints. Her thoughts centered around Eliot Van Zandt in agonizing
solicitude.
"He was my friend; he fought Remond to save me," she murmured; "and
shall I desert him in the danger he incurred for my sake? Never, never!
not if to find him I have to venture back into the spider's den, into
madame's presence again."
Day waned and faded, and the soft chiming of the vesper bells rang out
the hour of her release. Pale and watchful, she knelt among the nuns
and the pupils in the chapel, but ere the Aves and the Pater Nosters
were over, she had flitted like a shadow from the cloister, and in
"the dim, religious light" made her way into the garden, having first
secured her hat and cloak from a convenient rack. Breathless she made
her hurried way through the thick, dark shrubberies, praying now that
Heaven would aid her to escape from the half-insane old priest.
"Where there's a will there's a way." Desperation had made her bold and
reckless. But one means of escape presented itself, and that was to
scale the high stone wall with the bristling spikes on top. By the aid
of convenient shrubberies she accomplished the feat, and, with bleeding
hands and torn garments, dropped down upon the other side into the
street.
Fortunately, no one was passing, so her escape remained unnoticed.
Panting for breath, in her eagerness she ran the length of a square
and turned down a corner, losing herself in a labyrinth of streets.
She knew not where she was; but that did not matter yet. She was only
intent on putting the greatest possible distance between herself and
the convent where she had been so nearly immured for life.
After an hour's rapid walking through a locality of which she was
totally ignorant, she came suddenly into a street with which she was
familiar. From this she knew that she could make her way without
difficulty to Mme. Lorraine's house.
A sudden terror and reluctance seized upon her at thought of entering
that house of danger, and unconsciously her footsteps slackened their
headlong speed.
"To go back into the lion's den--it is hard!" she thought; then,
bravely, "But my friend risked his life for me. I can not do less for
him."