“Did they hand her over to a strange woman without any references?” said the mother, moistening her dry lips. “It seems so,” he answered bluntly. “They had the address in Liverpool, but when I went there the caretaker told me Mrs. Fuller had that morning gone to the Continent with a young lady till the spring. Oh, I fancy it’s all right, reverend mother! You are too troubled about a good-for-nothing runaway.” “Yes,” she said, and hid her hands in her sleeves that he might not see the trembling of them. “But her well-being is naturally a--sacred charge to me. I feel all this terribly.” She wondered while she spoke how she was to find out what was racking her, indeed. “Lord Erceldonne is lord of the manor at St. Anne’s--I suppose--he had not been interested in the sad case,” she observed. “He was away. I heard by chance.” The lawyer had not got speech of Ebenezer Davids, who was too unimportant. “He had not been there for months.” Mother Felicitas’ heart gave a bound of relief. Then it was, after all, what it looked! Some tender-hearted fool had adopted the girl. She was not beaten--yet! “Yes, yes!” she said indifferently. “But did the child, by the way, tell her name?” “Certainly,” he answered, rather surprised; but Mother Felicitas, of course, had never raised her saintly eyes and did not see. That was a blow; but still Erceldonne was away and he would certainly never see the workhouse register. He was in her power still. “That is all, I think. Thank you,” she said calmly. “We must first wait till this Mrs. Fuller returns. You have her address? And then perhaps our stray may be induced to return to us. You will take some refreshment before you leave, Mr. Mayhew?” But when he was gone Mother Felicitas sat cold and speechless. Perhaps she saw herself excommunicated if the whole story of her connection with Beryl Corselas ever came out. “At least, he does not know and never shall,” she thought, when thought would come. “He shall fear me till he dies, as he has feared me this many a year. He shall pay, as he has always paid, to the enrichment of our order,” for she, of all the convent, had alone known the source of the roll of notes that came anonymously each year to her. She frowned thoughtfully as she began to write a letter, dignified and guarded. It might be months in reaching the man it was meant for, but it would reach him in the end. It informed the guardians of the workhouse at St. Anne’s that the lady who had so kindly adopted the stray child had been authorized to do so by her only friend, the Mother Superior of the Convent of St. Mary; and that it was hoped the arrangement would be most satisfactory.