Around us there was the scrape of chairs on the polished floor. Some of the dinner-guests were rising and crossing the room to chat with friends at other tables. But the little group at our table sat in motionless attention, every eye on the Playwright's charming face.
"Good beginning," remarked the Best Seller, helpfully. "And, by Jove, the orchestra is giving you the 'Rosary' as an obbligato. There's a coincidence for you."
"Then the story came out," resumed the Playwright, ignoring the interruption. "At least part of it came out. The stranger had been the Mother General of a large conventual Order, which she herself had founded twenty years ago. She had built it up from one convent to thirty. She had established schools and hospitals all over America, as well as in Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines. She was a brilliant organizer, a human dynamo. Whatever she touched succeeded. She did not need to explain this; the extraordinary growth of her Community spoke for her. But a few months before she came to the editor, she said, a cabal had been established against her in her Mother House. She had returned from a visit to one of her Philippine convents to find that an election had been held in her absence, that she had been superseded, that the local superior of the Mother House had been elected Mother General in her place; in short, that she herself was deposed by her Community.
"She said that she never knew why. There was much talk of extravagance, of too rapid growth; her broadening plans, and the big financial risks she took, alarmed the more conservative nuns. She took their breath away. Possibly they were tired of the pace she set, and ready to rest on the Community's achievements. All that is not important. Mother General Elise was deposed. She could not remain as a subordinate in the Community she had ruled so long. Neither could she, she said, risk destroying the work of her life by making a fight for her rights and causing a newspaper sensation. So she left the Order, taking with her her only living relative, her old mother, eighty-one years of age, to whom for the previous year or two she had given a home in her Mother House."
"I am afraid," murmured the Best Seller, sadly, "that this story is going to depress me."
The Playwright nodded. "At first," she admitted. "But it ends with what we will call 'an uplift.'"
The Best Seller emptied his glass. "Oh, all right," he murmured. "Here's to the uplift!"
"The editor listened to the story," continued the Playwright. "Then she advised Miss Driscoll to go to Rome and have her case taken up at the Vatican. Surely what seemed such injustice would be righted there, and without undesirable notoriety for the Community. She introduced the former Mother General to several prominent New York men and women who could help her and give her letters she needed. There were various meetings at the houses of these people, who were all impressed by the force, the magnetism, and the charm of the convent queen who had been exiled from her kingdom. Then Miss Driscoll and her mother sailed for Italy."
The Diplomat leaned forward, his faded eyes as eager as a boy's. "Let me tell some of it!" he begged. "Let me tell what happened in Rome!"
The blue-eyed woman who had started the discussion clapped her hands. "Let each of us tell some of it," she cried. The Playwright smiled across at the Diplomat. "By all means," she urged, "tell the Roman end of it."