The one I have just made seemed necessary to explain why Sister Giovanna was able to go to her patient directly from Severi's rooms, and to take up her work with as much quiet efficiency as if nothing unusual had happened.
She had found the portress in considerable perturbation, for the right carriage had just arrived, a quarter of an hour late instead of half-an-hour too soon.

Sister Giovanna said that there had been a mistake, that she had been taken to the wrong house, that the first carriage should not have come to the hospital of the White Nuns at all, and that she had been kept waiting some time before being brought back.
All this was strictly true, and without further words she drove away to the Villino Barini, the brougham Severi had hired having already disappeared.

As he had foreseen, it was impossible that any one should suspect what had happened, for the nun was above suspicion, and when his carriage had once left the Convent door no one could ever trace the sham coachman and footman in order to question them.

In that direction, therefore, there was nothing to fear.

The authority of an Italian officer over his orderly is great, and his power of making the conscript's life singularly easy or perfectly unbearable is greater.
Even Sister Giovanna knew that, and she felt no anxiety about the future.
Her mind was the more free to serve her conscience in examining her own conduct.