HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON

TO
F. H. B.
WITH MEMORIES OF THE WISTFUL ADRIATIC

CONTENTS

CHAP.PAGE
I.My First Assignment[1]
II.The Cry of the Pack[24]
III.The Girl in Gray[43]
IV.In Gay Bohemia[68]
V.The Case of Helen Brandow[94]
VI.The Last of the Morans[120]
VII.To the Rescue of Miss Morris[140]
VIII.Maria Annunciata[162]
IX.The Revolt of Tildy Mears[184]
X.A Message from Mother Elise[206]
XI."T. B." Conducts a Rehearsal[228]
XII.The Rise of the Curtain[256]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

May Iverson[Frontispiece]
"Don't Stand There Staring. I Know I'm Not aBeauty,"
and She Cackled Like an Angry Hen.		Facing p.[12]
It Was Young "Shep," the Last of the Morans [124]
"D'ye Know the Woman?" He Said [176]

MAY IVERSON'S CAREER

MAY IVERSON'S CAREER

I
MY FIRST ASSIGNMENT

The Commencement exercises at St. Catharine's were over, and everybody in the big assembly-hall was looking relieved and grateful. Mabel Muriel Murphy had welcomed our parents and friends to the convent shades in an extemporaneous speech we had overheard her practising for weeks; and the proud face of Mabel Muriel's father, beaming on her as she talked, illumined the front row like an electric globe. Maudie Joyce had read a beautiful essay, full of uplifting thoughts and rare flowers of rhetoric; Mabel Blossom had tried to deliver her address without the manuscript, and had forgotten it at a vital point; Adeline Thurston had recited an original poem; Kittie James had sung a solo; and Janet Trelawney had played the Sixth Hungarian Rhapsody on the piano.