“As I hear that Viscount Erceldonne had kindly interested himself in the case, perhaps you would be so good as to let him know the ending,” the letter concluded, and when it was gone Mother Felicitas breathed more easily. Erceldonne should know that she was in keeping of his secret still; that the sword that hung over his head had not left her grasp. But, clever as she was, she never dreamed of Erceldonne’s face when the letter was forwarded to him in London. He was very busy, but he let his business stand while he chuckled over that courteous epistle. “There’s nothing so dangerous as being too clever,” he said, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes; “and this is too good! Mrs. Fuller--oh! Mother Felicitas! since that’s your name now--truly you have strange friends, for a nun.” He drew from his pocket two papers, the very ones to which his hand had flown on the night he had met the lamplighter. On one was written in an uneducated scrawl: “The Gurl is gone Run Away.” It had never entered the mind of the reverend mother that Lord Erceldonne had no idea of paying the hush-money for a dead or vanished girl, or that he had established a spy in her very house in the shape of the loutish boy who carried her vegetables to market, the only male being in her employ. It did not even strike her when, in a week or so, the boy gave warning and returned to his natural orbit in Lord Erceldonne’s employ. He was used to watching ladies for his master, and this was only a queerer item than usual on the list. The other letter was the “coincidence” his son had thought worth telling him--a letter that would have been wasted but for the lamplighter. Lord Erceldonne had reason to laugh that night. He swept his correspondence into a drawer as a light knock came on his door. “Come in!” he cried, and rose punctiliously, yet mockingly, for he knew who his visitor was. A little woman, exceedingly pretty, charming mannered, and exquisitely dressed, stood on the threshold. “May I?” her voice was not quite of a piece with the rest of her. “Dear Erceldonne! how warm your room is!” she exclaimed, seating herself. “Bad habit!” he returned vaguely. “I suppose you’ve come to say you’re off?” She nodded. “Paris!” she cried gaily. “Having accomplished your lordship’s wishes and played nursemaid for a month, I suppose I may go and amuse myself again. My kind godmother, as you know,” she said flippantly, “is on the Continent!” Erceldonne laughed. Truly that Mrs. Fuller whose address in Liverpool he had borrowed knew nothing of this one, nor of Beryl Corselas, either. “What are you going to do with that child?” she continued. “Not bring her here, surely. It would not be edifying--for Raimond!” Erceldonne’s middle-aged handsome face was utterly blank. He had no idea of telling his charming friend anything. She had served his purpose, and now the sooner he saw the last of her pretty person the better.