Would there were more of her kind in some houses monastic I know of,"
Puzzled and rather distress'd, then answer'd the truant religieuse,
"She whom I speak of, alas! was less of a saint than a sinner,
She fled from the veil and the cell, so surely you speak of another?"
"Not in the least, my child," the secular agent responded;
"Sister Beatrice, the saint-like, did not run away from the cloister,
Mistress is she of the novices. Why should she go? Stuff and nonsense!"
"What can it mean?" thought Beatrice, "and who is my double and namesake?"
So when the agent was gone, resolved she would settle the question,
Off to the convent she went, and knocked at the portal familiar,