"But you are so good. . . ."
"No, I am not good. I am very wicked. I should never have thought of
being a nun, but I'm glad now that I'm only a novice and have never
taken the vows."
After that she told me to go to sleep, and then she kissed me again, and
I thought she was going to cry, but she rose hurriedly and left the
room.
Next morning after the getting-up bell had been rung, and I had roused
myself to full consciousness, I found that four or five nuns were
standing together near the door of the dormitory talking about something
that had happened during the night--Sister Angela had gone!
Half an hour afterwards when full of this exciting event, the girls went
bursting down to the Meeting Room they found the nuns in great
agitation over an incident of still deeper gravity--Father Giovanni also
had disappeared!
A convent school is like a shell on the shore of a creek, always
rumbling with the rumour of the little sea it lives under; and by noon
the girls, who had been palpitating with curiosity, thought they knew
everything that had happened--how at four in the morning Father Giovanni
and Sister Angela had been seen to come out of the little door which
connected the garden with the street; how at seven they had entered a
clothing emporium in the Corso, where going in at one door as priest and
nun they had come out at another as ordinary civilians; how at eight
they had taken the first train to Civita Vecchia, arriving in time to
catch a steamer sailing at ten, and how they were now on their way to
England.
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