I gained by my unselfishness (I did not want to go), for the Reverend Mother met me in the corridor and stood talking to me about Eileen O'Connor, and told me part of the girl's story, which I found strange in its drama, though she left out the scene of greatest interest, as I heard later from Eileen herself.
The girl had come to Lille just before the war, as an art-mistress in an "École de Jeunes Filles" (her parents in Kensington had too big a family to keep them all), with lessons twice a week at the convent, and private pupils in her own rooms. She learned to speak French quickly and charmingly, and her gift of humour, her Irish frankness and comradeship made her popular among her pupils, so that she had many invitations to their homes and became well known in the best houses of Lille—mostly belonging to rich manufacturers. A commonplace story till then! But when the Germans occupied Lille this Irish girl became one of the chief characters in a drama that was exciting and fantastic to the point of melodrama. It was she who organised the Lille branch of a secret society of women, with a network all over northern France and Belgium—the world remembers Nurse Cavell at Brussels—for the escape of young civilians of military age and prisoners of war, combining that work (frightfully perilous) with espionage on German movements of troops and knowledge that might be of value to the Belgian Army, and through them to England and France. It was out of an old book of
