"There will be plenty of time to try over music."
The door opened again. It was the porteress come to say that
Monsignor had just arrived and would like to speak with the
Prioress.
"But ask him to come in…. Here is a friend of yours, Monsignor. She has just returned from—"
"From a disastrous concert tour, having only made four hundred pounds with six concerts. My career as a prima donna is at an end. The public is tired of me."
"The artistic public isn't tired of you," said Sister Mary John.
"Read, Monsignor; she has brought us all her notices."
"Oh, do take them away, Sister Mary John; you make me ashamed before Monsignor. Such vanity! What will he think of my bringing my notices to read to you? But you mustn't think I am so vain as that, Monsignor; it was really because I thought the nuns would be interested to hear of the music—and to excuse myself. But you know, Mother, once I take a project in hand I don't give it up easily. I have made up my mind to redeem this convent from debt, and it shall be done. My concert tour was a failure, but I have another idea in my head; and I came here to tell it to you. I don't know what Monsignor will think of it. I have been offered a good deal of money to go to America to sing my own parts, for Wagner is not yet dead in America."
"But, Miss Innes, I thought you intended to leave the stage?"
"I have left the stage, but I intend to go back to it. That is a point on which I will have to talk to Monsignor." Evelyn waited for the prelate to speak.
"Such determination is very unusual, and if the cause be a good one I congratulate you, Mother Prioress, on your champion who, to defend you, will start for the New World."
"Well, Monsignor, unless you repudiate the motives of those who went to Palestine to fight for the Holy Sepulchre, why should you repudiate mine?"