Marietta, the kind soul, noticing his despondency, sought in divers artless ways to cheer him.

One evening she burst into his sitting-room with the effect of a small explosion, excitement in every line of her brown old face and wiry little figure.

"The fireflies! The fireflies, Signorino!" she cried, with strenuous gestures.

"What fireflies?" asked he, with phlegm.

"It is the feast of St. Dominic. The fireflies have arrived. They arrive every year on the feast of St. Dominic. They are the beads of his rosary. They are St. Dominic's Aves. There are thousands of them. Come, Signorino, Come and see."

Her black eyes snapped. She waved her hands urgently towards the window.

Peter languidly got up, languidly crossed the room, looked out.

There were, in truth, thousands of them, thousands and thousands of tiny primrose flames, circling, fluttering, rising, sinking, in the purple blackness of the night, like snowflakes in a wind, palpitating like hearts of living gold—Jove descending upon Danae invisible.

"Son carin', eh?" cried eager Marietta.

"Hum—yes—pretty enough," he grudgingly acknowledged. "But even so?" the ingrate added, as he turned away, and let himself drop back into his lounging-chair. "My dear good woman, no amount of prettiness can disguise the fundamental banality of things. Your fireflies—St. Dominic's beads, if you like—and, apropos of that, do you know what they call them in America?—they call them lightning-bugs, if you can believe me—remark the difference between southern euphuism and western bluntness—your fireflies are pretty enough, I grant. But they are tinsel pasted on the Desert of Sahara. They are condiments added to a dinner of dust and ashes. Life, trick it out as you will, is just an incubus—is just the Old Man of the Sea. Language fails me to convey to you any notion how heavily he sits on my poor shoulders. I thought I had suffered from ennui in my youth. But the malady merely plays with the green fruit; it reserves its serious ravages for the ripe. I can promise you 't is not a laughing matter. Have you ever had a fixed idea? Have you ever spent days and nights racking your brain, importuning the unanswering Powers, to learn whether there was—well, whether there was Another Man, for instance? Oh, bring me drink. Bring me Seltzer water and Vermouth. I will seek nepenthe at the bottom of the wine-cup."

Was there another man? Why should there not be? And yet was there? In her continued absence, the question came back persistently, and scarcely contributed to his peace of mind.

A few days later, nothing discouraged, "Would you like to have a good laugh, Signorino?" Marietta enquired.

"Yes," he answered, apathetic.

"Then do me the favour to come," she said.

She led him out of his garden, to the gate of a neighbouring meadow. A beautiful black-horned white cow stood there, her head over the bars, looking up and down the road, and now and then uttering a low distressful "moo."

"See her," said Marietta.

"I see her. Well—?" said Peter.

"This morning they took her calf from her—to wean it," said Marietta.

"Did they, the cruel things? Well—?" said he.

"And ever since, she has stood there by the gate, looking down the road, waiting, calling."

"The poor dear. Well—?" said he.

"But do you not see, Signorino? Look at her eyes. She is weeping—weeping like a Christian."

Peter looked-and, sure enough, from the poor cow's eyes tears were falling, steadily, rapidly: big limpid tears that trickled down her cheek, her great homely hairy cheek, and dropped on the grass: tears of helpless pain, uncomprehending endurance. "Why have they done this thing to me?" they seemed dumbly to cry.

"Have you ever seen a cow weep before? Is it comical, at least?" demanded Marietta, exultant.

"Comical—?" Peter gasped. "Comical—!" he groaned....

But then he spoke to the cow.

"Poor dear—poor dear," he repeated. He patted her soft warm neck, and scratched her between the horns and along the dewlap.

"Poor dear—poor dear."

The cow lifted up her head, and rested her great chin on Peter's shoulder, breathing upon his face.

"Yes, you know that we are companions in misery, don't you?" he said. "They have taken my calf from me too—though my calf, indeed, was only a calf in an extremely metaphorical sense—and it never was exactly mine, anyhow—I daresay it's belonged from the beginning to another man. You, at least, have n't that gall and wormwood added to your cup. And now you must really try to pull yourself together. It's no good crying. And besides, there are more calves in the sea than have ever been taken from it. You'll have a much handsomer and fatter one next time. And besides, you must remember that your loss subserves someone else's gain—the farmer would never have done it if it hadn't been to his advantage. If you 're an altruist, that should comfort you. And you must n't mind Marietta,—you must n't mind her laughter. Marietta is a Latin. The Latin conception of what is laughable differs by the whole span of heaven from the Teuton. You and I are Teutons."

"Teutons—?" questioned Marietta wrinkling her brow.

"Yes—Germanic," said he.

"But I thought the Signorino was English?"

"So he is."

"But the cow is not Germanic. White, with black horns, that is the purest Roman breed, Signorino."

"Fa niente," he instructed her. "Cows and Englishmen, and all such sentimental cattle, including Germans, are Germanic. Italians are Latin—with a touch of the Goth and Vandal. Lions and tigers growl and fight because they're Mohammedans. Dogs still bear without abuse the grand old name of Sycophant. Cats are of the princely line of Persia, and worship fire, fish, and flattery—as you may have noticed. Geese belong indifferently to any race you like—they are cosmopolitans; and I've known here and there a person who, without distinction of nationality, was a duck. In fact, you're rather by way of being a duck yourself: And now," he perorated, "never deny again that I can talk nonsense with an aching heart."

"All the same," insisted Marietta, "it is very comical to see a cow weep."

"At any rate," retorted Peter, "it is not in the least comical to hear a hyaena laugh."

"I have never heard one," said she.

"Pray that you never may. The sound would make an old woman of you. It's quite blood-curdling."

"Davvero?" said Marietta.

"Davvero," he assured her.

And meanwhile the cow stood there, with her head on his shoulder, silently weeping, weeping.

He gave her a farewell rub along the nose.

"Good-bye," he said. "Your breath is like meadowsweet. So dry your tears, and set your hopes upon the future. I 'll come and see you again to-morrow, and I 'll bring you some nice coarse salt. Good-bye."

But when he went to see her on the morrow, she was grazing peacefully; and she ate the salt he brought her with heart-whole bovine relish—putting out her soft white pad of a tongue, licking it deliberately from his hand, savouring it tranquilly, and crunching the bigger grains with ruminative enjoyment between her teeth. So soon consoled! They were companions in misery no longer. "I 'm afraid you are a Latin, after all," he said, and left her with a sense of disappointment.

That afternoon Marietta asked, "Would you care to visit the castle, Signorino?"

He was seated under his willow-tree, by the river, smoking cigarettes—burning superfluous time.

Marietta pointed towards Ventirose.

"Why?" said he.

"The family are away. In the absence of the family, the public are admitted, upon presentation of their cards."

"Oho!" he cried. "So the family are away, are they?"

"Yes, Signorino."

"Aha!" cried he. "The family are away. That explains everything. Have—have they been gone long?"

"Since a week, ten days, Signorino."

"A week! Ten days!" He started up, indignant. "You secretive wretch! Why have you never breathed a word of this to me?"

Marietta looked rather frightened.

"I did not know it myself, Signorino," was her meek apology. "I heard it in the village this morning, when the Signorino sent me to buy coarse salt."

"Oh, I see." He sank back upon his rustic bench. "You are forgiven." He extended his hand in sign of absolution. "Are they ever coming back?"

"Naturally, Signorino."

"What makes you think so?"

"But they will naturally come back."

"I felicitate you upon your simple faith. When?"

"Oh, fra poco. They have gone to Rome."

"To Rome? You're trifling with me. People do not go to Rome in August."

"Pardon, Signorino. People go to Rome for the feast of the Assumption. That is the 15th. Afterwards they come back," said Marietta, firmly.

"I withdraw my protest," said Peter. "They have gone to Rome for the feast of the Assumption. Afterwards they will come back."

"Precisely, Signorino. But you have now the right to visit the castle, upon presentation of your card. You address yourself to the porter at the lodge. The castle is grand, magnificent. The Court of Honour alone is thirty metres long."

Marietta stretched her hands to right and left as far as they would go.

"Marietta," Peter enquired solemnly, "are you familiar with the tragedy of 'Hamlet'?"

Marietta blinked.

"No, Signorino."

"You have never read it," he pursued, "in that famous edition from which the character of the Prince of Denmark happened to be omitted?"

Marietta shook her head, wearily, patiently.

Wearily, patiently, "No, Signorino," she replied.

"Neither have I," said he, "and I don't desire to."

Marietta shrugged her shoulders; then returned gallantly to her charge.

"If you would care to visit the castle, Signorino, you could see the crypt which contains the tombs of the family of Farfalla, the former owners. They are of black marble and alabaster, with gilding—very rich. You could also see the wine-cellars. Many years ago a tun there burst, and a serving man was drowned in the wine. You could also see the bed in which Nabulione, the Emperor of Europe, slept, when he was in this country. Also the ancient kitchen. Many years ago, in a storm, the skeleton of a man fell down the chimney, out upon the hearth. Also what is called the Court of Foxes. Many years ago there was a plague of foxes; and the foxes came down from the forest like a great army, thousands of them. And the lords of the castle, and the peasants, and the village people, all, all, had to run away like rabbits—or the foxes would have eaten them. It was in what they call the Court of Foxes that the King of the foxes held his court. There is also the park. In the park there are statues, ruins, and white peacocks."

"What have I in common with ruins and white peacocks?" Peter demanded tragically, when Marietta had brought her much-gesticulated exposition to a close. "Let me impress upon you once for all that I am not a tripper. As for your castle—you invite me to a banquet-hall deserted. As for your park, I see quite as much of it as I wish to see, from the seclusion of my own pleached garden. I learned long ago the folly of investigating things too closely, the wisdom of leaving things in the vague. At present the park of Ventirose provides me with the raw material for day-dreams. It is a sort of looking-glass country,—I can see just so far into it, and no farther—that lies beyond is mystery, is potentiality—terra incognita, which I can populate with monsters or pleasant phantoms, at my whim. Why should you attempt to deprive me of so innocent a recreation?"

"After the return of the family," said Marietta, "the public will no longer be admitted. Meantime—"

"Upon presentation of my card, the porter will conduct me from disenchantment to disenchantment. No, thank you. Now, if it were the other way round, it would be different. If it were the castle and the park that had gone to Rome, and if the family could be visited on presentation of my card, I might be tempted."

"But that would be impossible, Signorino," said Marietta.



XV.

Beatrice walking with a priest—ay, I am not sure it would n't be more accurate to say conspiring with a priest: but you shall judge.

They were in a room of the Palazzo Udeschini, at Rome—a reception room, on the piano nobile. Therefore you see it: for are not all reception-rooms in Roman palaces alike?

Vast, lofty, sombre; the walls hung with dark-green tapestry—a pattern of vertical stripes, dark green and darker green; here and there a great dark painting, a Crucifixion, a Holy Family, in a massive dim-gold frame; dark-hued rugs on the tiled floor; dark pieces of furniture, tables, cabinets, dark and heavy; and tall windows, bare of curtains at this season, opening upon a court—a wide stone-eaved court, planted with fantastic-leaved eucalyptus-trees, in the midst of which a brown old fountain, indefatigable, played its sibilant monotone.

In the streets there were the smells, the noises, the heat, the glare of August of August in Rome, "the most Roman of the months," they say; certainly the hottest, noisiest, noisomest, and most glaring. But here all was shadow, coolness, stillness, fragrance-the fragrance of the clean air coming in from among the eucalyptus-trees.

Beatrice, critical-eyed, stood before a pier-glass, between two of the tall windows, turning her head from side to side, craning her neck a little—examining (if I must confess it) the effect of a new hat. It was a very stunning hat—if a man's opinion hath any pertinence; it was beyond doubt very complicated. There was an upward-springing black brim; there was a downward-sweeping black feather; there was a defiant white aigrette not unlike the Shah of Persia's; there were glints of red.

The priest sat in an arm-chair—one of those stiff, upright Roman arm-chairs, which no one would ever dream of calling easy-chairs, high-backed, covered with hard leather, studded with steel nails—and watched her, smiling amusement, indulgence.

He was an oldish priest—sixty, sixty-five. He was small, lightly built, lean-faced, with delicate-strong features: a prominent, delicate nose; a well-marked, delicate jaw-bone, ending in a prominent, delicate chin; a large, humorous mouth, the full lips delicately chiselled; a high, delicate, perhaps rather narrow brow, rising above humorous grey eyes, rather deep-set. Then he had silky-soft smooth white hair, and, topping the occiput, a tonsure that might have passed for a natural bald spot.

He was decidedly clever-looking; he was aristocratic-looking, distinguished-looking; but he was, above all, pleasant-looking, kindly-looking, sweet-looking.

He wore a plain black cassock, by no means in its first youth—brown along the seams, and, at the salient angles, at the shoulders, at the elbows, shining with the lustre of hard service. Even without his cassock, I imagine, you would have divined him for a clergyman—he bore the clerical impress, that odd indefinable air of clericism which everyone recognises, though it might not be altogether easy to tell just where or from what it takes its origin. In the garb of an Anglican—there being nothing, at first blush, necessarily Italian, necessarily un-English, in his face—he would have struck you, I think, as a pleasant, shrewd old parson of the scholarly—earnest type, mildly donnish, with a fondness for gentle mirth. What, however, you would scarcely have divined—unless you had chanced to notice, inconspicuous in this sober light, the red sash round his waist, or the amethyst on the third finger of his right hand—was his rank in the Roman hierarchy. I have the honour of presenting his Eminence Egidio Maria Cardinal Udeschini, formerly Bishop of Cittareggio, Prefect of the Congregation of Archives and Inscriptions.

That was his title ecclesiastical. He had two other titles. He was a Prince of the Udeschini by accident of birth. But his third title was perhaps his most curious. It had been conferred upon him informally by the populace of the Roman slum in which his titular church, St. Mary of the Lilies, was situated: the little Uncle of the Poor.

As Italians measure wealth, Cardinal Udeschini was a wealthy man. What with his private fortune and official stipends, he commanded an income of something like a hundred thousand lire. He allowed himself five thousand lire a year for food, clothing, and general expenses. Lodging and service he had for nothing in the palace of his family. The remaining ninety-odd thousand lire of his budget... Well, we all know that titles can be purchased in Italy; and that was no doubt the price he paid for the title I have mentioned.

However, it was not in money only that Cardinal Udeschim paid. He paid also in labour. I have said that his titular church was in a slum. Rome surely contained no slum more fetid, none more perilous—a region of cut-throat alleys, south of the Ghetto, along the Tiber bank. Night after night, accompanied by his stout young vicar, Don Giorgio Appolloni, the Cardinal worked there as hard as any hard-working curate: visiting the sick, comforting the afflicted, admonishing the knavish, persuading the drunken from their taverns, making peace between the combative. Not infrequently, when he came home, he would add a pair of stilettos to his already large collection of such relics. And his homecomings were apt to be late—oftener than not, after midnight; and sometimes, indeed, in the vague twilight of morning, at the hour when, as he once expressed it to Don Giorgio, "the tired burglar is just lying down to rest." And every Saturday evening the Cardinal Prefect of Archives and Inscriptions sat for three hours boxed up in his confessional, like any parish priest—in his confessional at St. Mary of the Lilies, where the penitents who breathed their secrets into his ears, and received his fatherly counsels... I beg your pardon. One must not, of course, remember his rags or his sores, when Lazarus approaches that tribunal.

But I don't pretend that the Cardinal was a saint; I am sure he was not a prig. For all his works of supererogation, his life was a life of pomp and luxury, compared to the proper saint's life. He wore no hair shirt; I doubt if he knew the taste of the Discipline. He had his weaknesses, his foibles—even, if you will, his vices. I have intimated that he was fond of a jest. "The Sacred College," I heard him remark one day, "has fifty centres of gravity. I sometimes fear that I am its centre of levity." He was also fond of music. He was also fond of snuff:

"'T is an abominable habit," he admitted. "I can't tolerate it at all—in others. When I was Bishop of Cittareggio, I discountenanced it utterly among my clergy. But for myself—I need not say there are special circumstances. Oddly enough, by the bye, at Cittareggio each separate member of my clergy was able to plead special circumstances for himself I have tried to give it up, and the effort has spoiled my temper—turned me into a perfect old shrew. For my friends' sake, therefore, I appease myself with an occasional pinch. You see, tobacco is antiseptic. It's an excellent preservative of the milk of human kindness."

The friends in question kept him supplied with sound rappee. Jests and music he was abundantly competent to supply himself. He played the piano and the organ, and he sang—in a clear, sweet, slightly faded tenor. Of secular composers his favourites were "the lucid Scarlatti, the luminous Bach." But the music that roused him to enthusiasm was Gregorian. He would have none other at St. Mary of the Lilies. He had trained his priests and his people there to sing it admirably—you should have heard them sing Vespers; and he sang it admirably himself—you should have heard him sing a Mass—you should have heard that sweet old tenor voice of his in the Preface and the Pater Noster.

So, then, Beatrice stood before a pier-glass, and studied her new hat; whilst the Cardinal, amused, indulgent, sat in his high-backed armchair, and watched her.

"Well—? What do you think?" she asked, turning towards him.

"You appeal to me as an expert?" he questioned.

His speaking-voice, as well as his singing-voice, was sweet, but with a kind of trenchant edge upon it, a genial asperity, that gave it character, tang.

"As one who should certainly be able to advise," said she.

"Well, then—" said he. He took his chin into his hand, as if it were a beard, and looked up at her, considering; and the lines of amusement—the "parentheses"—deepened at either side of his mouth. "Well, then, I think if the feather were to be lifted a little higher in front, and brought down a little lower behind—"

"Good gracious, I don't mean my hat," cried Beatrice. "What in the world can an old dear like you know about hats?"

There was a further deepening of the parentheses.

"Surely," he contended, "a cardinal should know much. Is it not 'the badge of all our tribe,' as your poet Byron says?"

Beatrice laughed. Then, "Byron—?" she doubted, with a look.

The Cardinal waved his hand—a gesture of amiable concession.

"Oh, if you prefer, Shakespeare. Everything in English is one or the other. We will not fall out, like the Morellists, over an attribution. The point is that I should be a good judge of hats."

He took snuff.

"It's a shame you haven't a decent snuff-box," Beatrice observed, with an eye on the enamelled wooden one, cheap and shabby, from which he helped himself.

"The box is but the guinea-stamp; the snuff's the thing.—Was it Shakespeare or Byron who said that?" enquired the Cardinal.

Beatrice laughed again.

"I think it must have been Pulcinella. I'll give you a lovely silver one, if you'll accept it."

"Will you? Really?" asked the Cardinal, alert.

"Of course I will. It's a shame you haven't one already."

"What would a lovely silver one cost?" he asked.

"I don't know. It does n't matter," answered she.

"But approximately? More or less?" he pursued.

"Oh, a couple of hundred lire, more or less, I daresay."

"A couple of hundred lire?" He glanced up, alerter. "Do you happen to have that amount of money on your person?"

Beatrice (the unwary woman) hunted for her pocket—took out her purse—computed its contents.

"Yes," she innocently answered.

The Cardinal chuckled—the satisfied chuckle of one whose unsuspected tactics have succeeded.

"Then give me the couple of hundred lire."

He put forth his hand.

But Beatrice held back.

"What for?" she asked, suspicion waking.

"Oh, I shall have uses for it."

His outstretched hand—a slim old tapering, bony hand, in colour like dusky ivory—closed peremptorily, in a dumb-show of receiving; and now, by the bye, you could not have failed to notice the big lucent amethyst, in its setting of elaborately-wrought pale gold, on the third finger.

"Come! Give!" he insisted, imperative.

Rueful but resigned, Beatrice shook her head.

"You have caught me finely," she sighed, and gave.

"You should n't have jingled your purse—you should n't have flaunted your wealth in my face," laughed the Cardinal, putting away the notes. He took snuff again. "I think I honestly earned that pinch," he murmured.

"At any rate," said Beatrice, laying what unction she could to her soul, "I am acquainted with a dignitary of the Church, who has lost a handsome silver snuffbox—beautiful repousse work, with his arms engraved on the lid."

"And I," retaliated he, "I am acquainted with a broken-down old doctor and his wife, in Trastevere, who shall have meat and wine at dinner for the next two months—at the expense of a niece of mine. 'I am so glad,' as Alice of Wonderland says, 'that you married into our family.'"

"Alice of Wonderland—?" doubted Beatrice.

The Cardinal waved his hand.

"Oh, if you prefer, Punch. Everything in English is one or the other."

Beatrice laughed. "It was the I of which especially surprised my English ear," she explained.

"I am your debtor for two hundred lire. I cannot quarrel with you over a particle," said he.

"But why," asked she, "why did you give yourself such superfluous pains? Why couldn't you ask me for the money point-blank? Why lure it from me, by trick and device?"

The Cardinal chuckled.

"Ah, one must keep one's hand in. And one must not look like a Jesuit for nothing."

"Do you look like a Jesuit?"

"I have been told so."

"By whom—for mercy's sake?"

"By a gentleman I had the pleasure of meeting not long ago in the train—a very gorgeous gentleman, with gold chains and diamonds flashing from every corner of his person, and a splendid waxed moustache, and a bald head which, I think, was made of polished pink coral. He turned to me in the most affable manner, and said, 'I see, Reverend Sir, that you are a Jesuit. There should be a fellow-feeling between you and me. I am a Jew. Jews and Jesuits have an almost equally bad name!'"

The Cardinal's humorous grey eyes swam in a glow of delighted merriment.

"I could have hugged him for his 'almost.' I have been wondering ever since whether in his mind it was the Jews or the Jesuits who benefited by that reservation. I have been wondering also what I ought to have replied."

"What did you reply?" asked Beatrice, curious.

"No, no," said the Cardinal. "With sentiments of the highest consideration, I must respectfully decline to tell you. It was too flat. I am humiliated whenever I recall it."

"You might have replied that the Jews, at least, have the advantage of meriting their bad name," she suggested.

"Oh, my dear child!" objected he. "My reply was flat—you would have had it sharp. I should have hurt the poor well-meaning man's feelings, and perhaps have burdened my own soul with a falsehood, into the bargain. Who are we, to judge whether people merit their bad name or not? No, no. The humiliating circumstance is, that if I had possessed the substance as well as the show, if I had really been a son of St. Ignatius, I should have found a retort that would have effected the Jew's conversion."

"And apropos of conversions," said Beatrice, "see how far we have strayed from our muttons."

"Our muttons—?" The Cardinal looked up, enquiring.

"I want to know what you think—not of my hat—but of my man."

"Oh—ah, yes; your Englishman, your tenant." The Cardinal nodded.

"My Englishman—my tenant—my heretic," said she.

"Well," said he, pondering, while the parentheses became marked again,—"I should think, from what you tell me, that you would find him a useful neighbour. Let me see... You got fifty lire out of him, for a word; and the children went off, blessing you as their benefactress. I should think that you would find him a valuable neighbour—and that he, on his side, might find you an expensive one."

Beatrice, with a gesture, implored him to be serious.

"Ah, please don't tease about this," she said. "I want to know what you think of his conversion?"

"The conversion of a heretic is always 'a consummation devoutly to be desired,' as well, you may settle it between Shakespeare and Byron, to suit yourself. And there are none so devoutly desirous of such consummations as you Catholics of England—especially you women. It is said that a Catholic Englishwoman once tried to convert the Pope."

"Well, there have been popes whom it would n't have hurt," commented Beatrice. "And as for Mr. Marchdale," she continued, "he has shown 'dispositions.' He admitted that he could see no reason why it should not have been Our Blessed Lady who sent us to the children's aid. Surely, from a Protestant, that is an extraordinary admission?"

"Yes," said the Cardinal. "And if he meant it, one may conclude that he has a philosophic mind."

"If he meant it?" Beatrice cried. "Why should he not have meant it? Why should he have said it if he did not mean it?"

"Oh, don't ask me," protested the Cardinal. "There is a thing the French call politesse. I can conceive a young man professing to agree with a lady for the sake of what the French might call her beaux yeux."

"I give you my word," said Beatrice, "that my beaux yeux had nothing to do with the case. He said it in the most absolute good faith. He said he believed that in a universe like ours nothing was impossible—that there were more things in heaven and earth than people generally dreamed of—that he could see no reason why the Blessed Virgin should not have sent us across the children's path. Oh, he meant it. I am perfectly sure he meant it."

The Cardinal smiled—at her eagerness, perhaps.

"Well, then," he repeated, "we must conclude that he has a philosophic mind."

"But what is one to do?" asked she. "Surely one ought to do something? One ought to follow such an admission up? When a man is so far on the way to the light, it is surely one's duty to lead him farther?"

"Without doubt," said the Cardinal.

"Well—? What can one do?"

The Cardinal looked grave.

"One can pray," he said.

"Emilia and I pray for his conversion night and morning."

"That is good," he approved.

"But that is surely not enough?"

"One can have Masses said."

"Monsignor Langshawe, at the castle, says a Mass for him twice a week."

"That is good," approved the Cardinal.

"But is that enough?"

"Why doesn't Monsignor Langshawe call upon him—cultivate his acquaintance—talk with him—set him thinking?" the Cardinal enquired.

"Oh, Monsignor Langshawe!" Beatrice sighed, with a gesture. "He is interested in nothing but geology—he would talk to him of nothing but moraines—he would set him thinking of nothing but the march of glaciers."

"Hum," said the Cardinal.

"Well, then—?" questioned Beatrice.

"Well, then, Carissima, why do you not take the affair in hand yourself?"

"But that is just the difficulty. What can I what can a mere woman—do in such a case?"

The Cardinal looked into his amethyst, as a crystal-gazer into his crystal; and the lines about his humorous old mouth deepened and quivered.

"I will lend you the works of Bellarmine in I forget how many volumes. You can prime yourself with them, and then invite your heretic to a course of instructions."

"Oh, I wish you would n't turn it to a joke," said Beatrice.

"Bellarmine—a joke!" exclaimed the Cardinal. "It is the first time I have ever heard him called so. However, I will not press the suggestion."

"But then—? Oh, please advise me seriously. What can I do? What can a mere unlearned woman do?"

The Cardinal took snuff. He gazed into his amethyst again, beaming at it, as if he could descry something deliciously comical in its depths. He gave a soft little laugh. At last he looked up.

"Well," he responded slowly, "in an extremity, I should think that a mere unlearned woman might, if she made an effort, ask the heretic to dinner. I 'll come down and stay with you for a day or two, and you can ask him to dinner."

"You're a perfect old darling," cried Beatrice, with rapture. "He'll never be able to resist you."'

"Oh, I 'm not undertaking to discuss theology with him," said the Cardinal. "But one must do something in exchange for a couple of hundred lire—so I'll come and give you my moral support."

"You shall have your lovely silver snuffbox, all the same," said she.

Mark the predestination!



XVI

"CASTEL VENTIROSE, "August 21 st.

"DEAR Mr. Marchdale: It will give me great pleasure if you can dine with us on Thursday evening next, at eight o'clock, to meet my uncle, Cardinal Udeschini, who is staying here for a few days.

"I have been re-reading 'A Man of Words.' I want you to tell me a great deal more about your friend, the author.

Yours sincerely, BEATRICE DI SANTANGIOLO."

It is astonishing, what men will prize, what men will treasure. Peter Marchdale, for example, prizes, treasures, (and imagines that he will always prize and treasure), the perfectly conventional, the perfectly commonplace little document, of which the foregoing is a copy.

The original is written in rather a small, concentrated hand, not overwhelmingly legible perhaps, but, as we say, "full of character," on paper lightly blueish, in the prescribed corner of which a tiny ducal coronet is embossed, above the initials "B. S." curiously interlaced in a cypher.

When Peter received it, and (need I mention?) approached it to his face, he fancied he could detect just a trace, just the faintest reminder, of a perfume—something like an afterthought of orris. It was by no means anodyne. It was a breath, a whisper, vague, elusive, hinting of things exquisite, intimate of things intimately feminine, exquisitely personal. I don't know how many times he repeated that manoeuvre of conveying the letter to his face; but I do know that when I was privileged to inspect it, a few months later, the only perfume it retained was an unmistakable perfume of tobacco.

I don't know, either, how many times he read it, searched it, as if secrets might lie perdu between the lines, as if his gaze could warm into evidence some sympathetic ink, or compel a cryptic sub-intention from the text itself.

Well, to be sure, the text had cryptic subintentions; but these were as far as may be from any that Peter was in a position to conjecture. How could he guess, for instance, that the letter was an instrument, and he the victim, of a Popish machination? How could he guess that its writer knew as well as he did who was the author of "A Man of Words"?

And then, all at once, a shade of trouble of quite another nature fell upon his mind. He frowned for a while in silent perplexity. At last he addressed himself to Marietta.

"Have you ever dined with a cardinal?" he asked.

"No, Signorino," that patient sufferer replied.

"Well, I'm in the very dickens of a quandary—son' proprio nel dickens d'un imbarazzo." he informed her.

"Dickens—?" she repeated.

"Si—Dickens, Carlo, celebre autore inglese. Why not?" he asked.

Marietta gazed with long-suffering eyes at the horizon.

"Or, to put it differently," Peter resumed, "I've come all the way from London with nothing better than a dinner jacket in my kit."

"Dina giacca? Cosa e?" questioned Marietta.

"No matter what it is—the important thing is what it is n't. It is n't a dress-coat."

"Non e un abito nero," said Marietta, seeing that he expected her to say something.

"Well—? You perceive my difficulty. Do you think you could make me one?" said Peter.

"Make the Signorino a dress-coat? I? Oh, no, Signorino." Marietta shook her head.

"I feared as much," he acknowledged. "Is there a decent tailor in the village?"

"No, Signorino."

"Nor in the whole length and breadth of this peninsula, if you come to that. Well, what am I to do? How am I to dine with a cardinal? Do you think a cardinal would have a fit if a man were to dine with him in a dina giacca?"

"Have a fit? Why should he have a fit, Signorino?" Marietta blinked.

"Would he do anything to the man? Would he launch the awful curses of the Church at him, for instance?"

"Mache, Signorino!" She struck an attitude that put to scorn his apprehensions.

"I see," said Peter. "You think there is no danger? You advise me to brazen the dina giacca out, to swagger it off?"

"I don't understand, Signorino," said Marietta.

"To understand is to forgive," said he; "and yet you can't trifle with English servants like this, though they ought to understand, ought n't they? In any case, I 'll be guided by your judgment. I'll wear my dina giacca, but I'll wear it with an air! I 'll confer upon it the dignity of a court-suit. Is that a gardener—that person working over there?"

Marietta looked in the quarter indicated by Peter's nod.

"Yes, Signorino; ha is the same gardener who works here three days every week," she answered.

"Is he, really? He looks like a pirate," Peter murmured.

"Like a pirate? Luigi?" she exclaimed.

"Yes," affirmed her master. "He wears green corduroy trousers, and a red belt, and a blue shirt. That is the pirate uniform. He has a swarthy skin, and a piercing eye, and hair as black as the Jolly Roger. Those are the marks by which you recognise a pirate, even when in mufti. I believe you said his name is Luigi?"

"Yes, Signorino—Luigi Maroni. We call him Gigi."

"Is Gigi versatile?" asked Peter.

"Versatile—?" puzzled Marietta. But then, risking her own interpretation of the recondite word, "Oh, no, Signorino. He is of the country."

"Ah, he's of the country, is he? So much the better. Then he will know the way to Castel Ventirose?"

"But naturally, Signorino." Marietta nodded.

"And do you think, for once in a way, though not versatile, he could be prevailed upon to divert his faculties from the work of a gardener to that of a messenger?"

"A messenger, Signorino?" Marietta wrinkled up her brow.

"Ang—an unofficial postman. Do you think he could be induced to carry a letter for me to the castle?"

"But certainly, Signorino. He is here to obey the Signorino's orders." Marietta shrugged her shoulders, and waved her hands.

"Then tell him, please, to go and put the necessary touches to his toilet," said Peter. "Meanwhile I'll indite the letter."

When his letter was indited, he found the piratical-looking Gigi in attendance, and he gave it to him, with instructions.

Thereupon Gigi (with a smile of sympathetic intelligence, inimitably Italian) put the letter in his hat, put his hat upon his head, and started briskly off—but not in the proper direction: not in the direction of the road, which led to the village, and across the bridge, and then round upon itself to the gates of the park. He started briskly off towards Peter's own toolhouse, a low red-tiled pavilion, opposite the door of Marietta's kitchen.

Peter was on the point of calling to him, of remonstrating. Then he thought better of it. He would wait a bit, and watch.

He waited and watched; and this was what he saw.

Gigi entered the tool-house, and presently brought out a ladder, which he carried down to the riverside, and left there. Then he returned to the tool-house, and came back bearing an armful of planks, each perhaps a foot wide by five or six feet long. Now he raised his ladder to the perpendicular, and let it descend before him, so that, one extremity resting upon the nearer bank, one attained the further, and it spanned the flood. Finally he laid a plank lengthwise upon the hithermost rungs, and advanced to the end of it; then another plank; then a third: and he stood in the grounds of Ventirose.

He had improvised a bridge—a bridge that swayed upwards and downwards more or less dizzily about the middle, if you will—but an entirely practicable bridge, for all that. And he had saved himself at least a good three miles, to the castle and back, by the road.

Peter watched, and admired.

"And I asked whether he was versatile!" he muttered. "Trust an Italian for economising labour. It looks like unwarrantable invasion of friendly territory—but it's a dodge worth remembering, all the same."

He drew the Duchessa's letter from his pocket, and read it again, and again approached it to his face, communing with that ghost of a perfume.

"Heavens! how it makes one think of chiffons," he exclaimed. "Thursday—Thursday—help me to live till Thursday!"



XVII

But he had n't to live till Thursday—he was destined to see her not later than the next afternoon.

You know with what abruptness, with how brief a warning, storms will spring from the blue, in that land of lakes and mountains.

It was three o'clock or thereabouts; and Peter was reading in his garden; and the whole world lay basking in unmitigated sunshine.

Then, all at once, somehow, you felt a change in things: the sunshine seemed less brilliant, the shadows less solid, less sharply outlined. Oh, it was very slight, very uncertain; you had to look twice to assure yourself that it was n't a mere fancy. It seemed as if never so thin a gauze had been drawn over the face of the sun, just faintly bedimming, without obscuring it. You could have ransacked the sky in vain to discover the smallest shred of cloud.

At the same time, the air, which had been hot all day—hot, but buoyant, but stimulant, but quick with oxygen—seemed to become thick, sluggish, suffocating, seemed to yield up its vital principle, and to fall a dead weight upon the earth. And this effect was accompanied by a sudden silence—the usual busy out-of-door country noises were suddenly suspended: the locusts stopped their singing; not a bird twittered; not a leaf rustled: the world held its breath. And if the river went on babbling, babbling, that was a very part of the silence—accented, underscored it.

Yet still you could not discern a rack of cloud anywhere in the sky—still, for a minute or two.... Then, before you knew how it had happened, the snow-summits of Monte Sfiorito were completely lapped in cloud.

And now the cloud spread with astonishing rapidity—spread and sank, cancelling the sun, shrouding the Gnisi to its waist, curling in smoky wreaths among the battlements of the Cornobastone, turning the lake from sapphire to sombre steel, filling the entire valley with a strange mixture of darkness and an uncanny pallid light. Overhead it hung like a vast canopy of leaden-hued cotton-wool; at the west it had a fringe of fiery crimson, beyond which a strip of clear sky on the horizon diffused a dull metallic yellow, like tarnished brass.

Presently, in the distance, there was a low growl of thunder; in a minute, a louder, angrier growl—as if the first were a menace which had not been heeded. Then there was a violent gush of wind—cold; smelling of the forests from which it came; scattering everything before it, dust, dead leaves, the fallen petals of flowers; making the trees writhe and labour, like giants wrestling with invisible giants; making the short grass shudder; corrugating the steel surface of the lake. Then two or three big raindrops fell—and then, the deluge.

Peter climbed up to his observatory—a square four-windowed turret, at the top of the house—thence to watch the storm and exult in it. Really it was splendid—to see, to hear; its immense wild force, its immense reckless fury. Rain had never rained so hard, he thought. Already, the lake, the mountain slopes, the villas and vineyards westward, were totally blotted out, hidden behind walls and walls of water; and even the neighbouring lawns of Ventirose, the confines of his own garden, were barely distinguishable, blurred as by a fog. The big drops pelted the river like bullets, sending up splashes bigger than themselves. And the tiled roof just above his head resounded with a continual loud crepitation, as if a multitude of iron-shod elves were dancing on it. The thunder crashed, roared, reverberated, like the toppling of great edifices. The lightning tore through the black cloud-canopy in long blinding zig-zags. The wind moaned, howled, hooted—and the square chamber where Peter stood shook and rattled under its buffetings, and was full of the chill and the smell of it. Really the whole thing was splendid.

His garden-paths ran with muddy brooklets; the high-road beyond his hedge was transformed to a shallow torrent.... And, just at that moment, looking off along the highroad, he saw something that brought his heart into his throat.

Three figures were hurrying down it, half-drowned in the rain—the Duchessa di Santangiolo, Emilia Manfredi, and a priest.

In a twinkling, Peter, bareheaded, was at his gate.

"Come in—come in," he called.

"We are simply drenched—we shall inundate your house," the Duchessa said, as he showed them into his sitting-room.

They were indeed dripping with water, soiled to their knees with mud.

"Good heavens!" gasped Peter, stupid. "How were you ever out in such a downpour?"

She smiled, rather forlornly.

"No one told us that it was going to rain, and we were off for a good long walk—for pleasure."

"You must be wet to the bone—you must be perishing with cold," he cried, looking from one to another.

"Yes, I daresay we are perishing with cold," she admitted.

"And I have no means of offering you a fire—there are no fireplaces," he groaned, with a gesture round the bleak Italian room, to certify their absence.

"Is n't there a kitchen?" asked the Duchessa, a faint spark of raillery kindling amid the forlornness of her smile.

Peter threw up his hands.

"I had lost my head. The kitchen, of course. I 'll tell Marietta to light a fire."

He excused himself, and sought out Marietta. He found her in her housekeeper's room, on her knees, saying her rosary, in obvious terror. I 'm afraid he interrupted her orisons somewhat brusquely.

"Will you be so good as to start a rousing fire in the kitchen—as quickly as ever it can be done?"

And he rejoined his guests.

"If you will come this way—" he said.

Marietta had a fire of logs and pine-cones blazing in no time. She courtesied low to the Duchessa, lower still to the priest—in fact, Peter was n't sure that she did n't genuflect before him, while he made a rapid movement with his hand over her head: the Sign of the Cross, perhaps.

He was a little, unassuming-looking, white haired priest, with a remarkably clever, humorous, kindly face; and he wore a remarkably shabby cassock. The Duchessa's chaplain, Peter supposed. How should it occur to him that this was Cardinal Udeschini? Do Cardinals (in one's antecedent notion of them) wear shabby cassocks, and look humorous and unassuming? Do they go tramping about the country in the rain, attended by no retinue save a woman and a fourteen-year-old girl? And are they little men—in one's antecedent notion? True, his shabby cassock had red buttons, and there was a red sash round his waist, and a big amethyst glittered in a setting of pale gold on his annular finger. But Peter was not sufficiently versed in fashions canonical, to recognise the meaning of these insignia.

How, on the other hand, should it occur to the Duchessa that Peter needed enlightenment? At all events, she said to him, "Let me introduce you;" and then, to the priest, "Let me present Mr. Marchdale—of whom you have heard before now."

The white-haired old man smiled sweetly into Peter's eyes, and gave him a slender, sensitive old hand.

"E cattivo vento che non e buono per qualcuno—debbo a questa burrasca la pregustazione d' un piacere," he said, with a mingling of ceremonious politeness and sunny geniality that was of his age and race.

Peter—instinctively—he could not have told why—put a good deal more deference into his bow, than men of his age and race commonly put into their bows, and murmured something about "grand' onore."

Marietta placed a row of chairs before the raised stone hearth, and afterwards, at her master's request, busied herself preparing tea.

"But I think you would all be wise to take a little brandy first," Peter suggested. "It is my despair that I am not able to provide you with a change of raiment. Brandy will be the best substitute, perhaps."

The old priest laughed, and put his hand upon the shoulder of Emilia.

"You have spared this young lady an embarrassing avowal. Brandy is exactly what she was screwing her courage to the point of asking for."

"Oh, no!" protested Emilia, in a deep Italian voice, with passionate seriousness.

But Peter fetched a decanter, and poured brandy for everyone.

"I drink to your health—c'est bien le cas de le dire. I hope you will not have caught your deaths of cold," he said.

"Oh, we are quite warm now," said the Duchessa. "We are snug in an ingle on Mount Ararat."

"Our wetting will have done us good—it will make us grow. You and I will never regret that, will we, Emilietta?" said the priest.

A lively colour had come into the Duchessa's cheeks; her eyes seemed unusually bright. Her hair was in some disorder, drooping at the sides, and blown over her brow in fine free wavelets. It was dark in the kitchen, save for the firelight, which danced fantastically on the walls and ceiling, and struck a ruddy glow from Marietta's copper pots and pans. The rain pattered lustily without; the wind wailed in the chimney; the lightning flashed, the thunder volleyed. And Peter looked at the Duchessa—and blessed the elements. To see her seated there, in her wet gown, seated familiarly, at her ease, before his fire, in his kitchen, with that colour in her cheeks, that brightness in her eyes, and her hair in that disarray—it was unspeakable; his heart closed in a kind of delicious spasm. And the fragrance, subtle, secret, evasive, that hovered in the air near her, did not diminish his emotion.

"I wonder," she asked, with a comical little glance upwards at him, "whether you would resent it very much if I should take off my hat—because it's a perfect reservoir, and the water will keep trickling down my neck."

His joy needed but this culmination that she should take off her hat!

"Oh, I beg of you—" he returned fervently.

"You had better take yours off too, Emilia," said the Duchessa.

"Admire masculine foresight," said the priest. "I took mine off when I came in."

"Let me hang them up," said Peter.

It was wonderful to hold her hat in his hand—it was like holding a part of herself. He brushed it surreptitiously against his face, as he hung it up. Its fragrance—which met him like an answering caress, almost—did not lessen his emotion.

Then Marietta brought the tea, with bread-and-butter, and toast, and cakes, and pretty blue china cups and saucers, and silver that glittered in the firelight.

"Will you do me the honour of pouring the tea?" Peter asked the Duchessa.

So she poured the tea, and Peter passed it. As he stood close to her, to take it—oh, but his heart beat, believe me! And once, when she was giving him a cup, the warm tips of her fingers lightly touched his hand. Believe me, the touch had its effect. And always there was that heady fragrance in the air, like a mysterious little voice, singing secrets.

"I wonder," the old priest said, "why tea is not more generally drunk by us Italians. I never taste it without resolving to acquire the habit. I remember, when I was a child, our mothers used to keep it as a medicine; and you could only buy it at the chemists' shops."

"It's coming in, you know, at Rome—among the Whites," said the Duchessa.

"Among the Whites!" cried he, with a jocular simulation of disquiet. "You should not have told me that, till I had finished my cup. Now I shall feel that I am sharing a dissipation with our spoliators."

"That should give an edge to its aroma," laughed she. "And besides, the Whites aren't all responsible for our spoliation—some of them are not so white as your fancy paints them. They'd be very decent people, for the most part—if they were n't so vulgar."

"If you stick up for the Whites like that when I am Pope, I shall excommunicate you," the priest threatened. "Meanwhile, what have you to say against the Blacks?"

"The Blacks, with few exceptions, are even blacker than they're painted; but they too would be fairly decent people in their way—if they were n't so respectable. That is what makes Rome impossible as a residence for any one who cares for human society. White society is so vulgar—Black society is so deadly dull."

"It is rather curious," said the priest, "that the chief of each party should wear the colour of his adversary. Our chief dresses in white, and their chief can be seen any day driving about the streets in black."

And Peter, during this interchange of small-talk, was at liberty to feast his eyes upon her.

"Perhaps you have not yet reached the time of life where men begin to find a virtue in snuff?" the priest said, producing a smart silver snuff box, tapping the lid, and proffering it to Peter.

"On the contrary—thank you," Peter answered, and absorbed his pinch like an adept.

"How on earth have you learned to take it without a paroxysm?" cried the surprised Duchessa.

"Oh, a thousand years ago I was in the Diplomatic Service," he explained. "It is one of the requirements."

Emilia Manfredi lifted her big brown eyes, filled with girlish wonder, to his face, and exclaimed, "How extraordinary!"

"It is n't half so extraordinary as it would be if it were true, my dear," said the Duchessa.

"Oh? Non e poi vero?" murmured Emilia, and her eyes darkened with disappointment.

Peter meanwhile was looking at the snuffbox, which the priest still held in his hand, and admiring its brave repousse work of leaves and flowers, and the escutcheon engraved on the lid. But what if he could have guessed the part he had passively played in obtaining it for its possessor—or the part that it was still to play in his own epopee? Mark again the predestination!

"The storm is passing," said the priest.

"Worse luck!" thought Peter.

For indeed the rain and the wind were moderating, the thunder had rolled farther away, the sky was becoming lighter.

"But there's a mighty problem before us still," said the Duchessa. "How are we to get to Ventirose? The roads will, be ankle-deep with mud."

"If you wish to do me a very great kindness—" Peter began.

"Yes—?" she encouraged him.

"You will allow me to go before you, and tell them to come for you with a carriage."

"I shall certainly allow you to do nothing of the sort," she replied severely. "I suppose there is no one whom you could send?"

"I should hardly like to send Marietta. I 'm afraid there is no one else. But upon my word, I should enjoy going myself."

She shook her head, smiling at him with mock compassion.

"Would you? Poor man, poor man! That is an enjoyment which you will have to renounce. One must n't expect too much in this sad life."

"Well, then," said Peter, "I have an expedient. If you can walk a somewhat narrow plank—?"

"Yes—?" questioned she.

"I think I can improvise a bridge across the river."

"I believe the rain has stopped," said the priest, looking towards the window.

Peter, manning his soul for the inevitable, got up, went to the door, opened it, stuck out his head.

"Yes," he acknowledged, while his heart sank within him, "the rain has stopped."

And now the storm departed almost as rapidly as it had arrived. In the north the sky was already clear, blue and hard-looking—a wall of lapis-lazuli. The dark cloud-canopy was drifting to the south. Suddenly the sun came out, flashing first from the snows of Monte Sfiorito, then, in an instant, flooding the entire prospect with a marvellous yellow light, ethereal amber; whilst long streamers of tinted vapour—columns of pearl-dust, one might have fancied—rose to meet it; and all wet surfaces, leaves, lawns, tree-trunks, housetops, the bare crags of the Gnisi, gleamed in a wash of gold.

Puffs of fresh air blew into the kitchen, filling it with the keen sweet odour of wet earth. The priest and the Duchessa and Emilia joined Peter at the open door.

"Oh, your poor, poor garden!" the Duchessa cried.

His garden had suffered a good deal, to be sure. The flowers lay supine, their faces beaten into the mud; the greensward was littered with fallen leaves and twigs—and even in one or two places whole branches had been broken from the trees; on the ground about each rose-bush a snow of pink rose-petals lay scattered; in the paths there were hundreds of little pools, shining in the sun like pools of fire.

"There's nothing a gardener can't set right," said Peter, feeling no doubt that here was a trifling tax upon the delights the storm had procured him.

"And oh, our poor, poor hats!" said the Duchessa, eyeing ruefully those damaged pieces of finery. "I fear no gardener can ever set them right."

"It sounds inhospitable," said Peter, "but I suppose I had better go and build your bridge."

So he threw a ladder athwart the river, and laid the planks in place, as he had seen Gigi do the day before.

"How ingenious—and, like all great things, how simple," laughed the Duchessa.

Peter waved his hand, as who should modestly deprecate applause. But, I 'm ashamed to own, he didn't disclaim the credit of the invention.

"It will require some nerve," she reflected, looking at the narrow planks, the foaming green water. "However—"

And gathering in her skirts, she set bravely forward, and made the transit without mishap. The priest and Emilia, gathering in their skirts, made it after her.

She paused on the other side, and looked back, smiling.

"Since you have discovered so efficacious a means of cutting short the distance between our places of abode," she said, "I hope you will not fail to profit by it whenever you may have occasion—on Thursday, for example."

"Thank you very much," said Peter.

"Of course," she went on, "we may all die of our wetting yet. It would perhaps show a neighbourly interest if you were to come up to-morrow, and take our news. Come at four o'clock; and if we're alive... you shall have another pinch of snuff," she promised, laughing.

"I adore you," said Peter, under his breath. "I'll come with great pleasure," he said aloud.

"Marietta," he observed, that evening, as he dined, "I would have you to know that the Aco is bridged. Hence, there is one symbol the fewer in Lombardy. But why does—you mustn't mind the Ollendorfian form of my enquiry—why does the chaplain of the Duchessa wear red stockings?"

"The chaplain of the Duchessa—?" repeated Marietta, wrinkling up her brow.

"Ang—of the Duchessa di Santangiolo. He wore red stockings, and shoes with silver buckles. Do you think that's precisely decorous—don't you think it 's the least bit light-minded—in an ecclesiastic?"

"He—? Who—?" questioned Marietta.

"But the chaplain of the Duchessa—when he was here this afternoon."

"The chaplain of the Duchessa!" exclaimed Marietta. "Here this afternoon? The chaplain of the Duchessa was not here this afternoon. His Eminence the Lord Prince Cardinal Udeschini was here this afternoon."

"What!" gasped Peter.

"Ang," said Marietta.

"That was Cardinal Udeschini—that little harmless-looking, sweet-faced old man!" Peter wondered.

"Sicuro—the uncle of the Duca," said she.

"Good heavens!" sighed he. "And I allowed myself to hobnob with him like a boon-companion."

"Gia," said she.

"You need n't rub it in," said he. "For the matter of that, you yourself entertained him in your kitchen."

"Scusi?" said she.

"Ah, well—it was probably for the best," he concluded. "I daresay I should n't have behaved much better if I had known."

"It was his coming which saved this house from being struck by lightning," announced Marietta.

"Oh—? Was it?" exclaimed Peter.

"Yes, Signorino. The lightning would never strike a house that the Lord Prince Cardinal was in."

"I see—it would n't venture—it would n't presume. Did—did it strike all the houses that the Lord Prince Cardinal was n't in?"

"I do not think so, Signorino. Ma non fa niente. It was a terrible storm—terrible, terrible. The lightning was going to strike this house, when the Lord Prince Cardinal arrived."

"Hum," said Peter. "Then you, as well as I, have reason for regarding his arrival as providential."



XVIII

"I think something must have happened to my watch," Peter said, next day.

Indeed, its hands moved with extraordinary, with exasperating slowness.

"It seems absurd that it should do no good to push them on," he thought.

He would force himself, between twice ascertaining their position, to wait for a period that felt like an eternity, walking about miserably, and smoking flavourless cigarettes;—then he would stand amazed, incredulous, when, with a smirk (as it almost struck him) of ironical complacence, they would attest that his eternity had lasted something near a quarter of an hour.

"And I had professed myself a Kantian, and made light of the objective reality of Time! thou laggard, Time!" he cried, and shook his fist at Space, Time's unoffending consort.

"I believe it will never be four o'clock again," he said, in despair, finally; and once more had out his watch. It was half-past three. He scowled at the instrument's bland white face. "You have no bowels, no sensibilities—nothing but dry little methodical jog-trot wheels and pivots!" he exclaimed, flying to insult for relief. "You're as inhuman as a French functionary. Do you call yourself a sympathetic comrade for an impatient man?" He laid it open on his rustic table, and waited through a last eternity. At a quarter to four he crossed the river. "If I am early—tant pis!" he decided, choosing the lesser of two evils, and challenging Fate.

He crossed the river, and stood for the first time in the grounds of Ventirose—stood where she had been in the habit of standing, during their water-side colloquies. He glanced back at his house and garden, envisaging them for the first time, as it were, from her point of view. They had a queer air of belonging to an era that had passed, to a yesterday already remote. They looked, somehow, curiously small, moreover—the garden circumscribed, the two-storied house, with its striped sunblinds, poor and petty. He turned his back upon them—left them behind. He would have to come home to them later in the day, to be sure; but then everything would be different. A chapter would have added itself to the history of the world; a great event, a great step forward, would have definitely taken place. He would have been received at Ventirose as a friend. He would be no longer a mere nodding acquaintance, owing even that meagre relationship to the haphazard of propinquity. The ice-broken, if you will, but still present in abundance—would have been gently thawed away. One era had passed; but then a new era would have begun.

So he turned his back upon Villa F'loriano, and set off, high-hearted, up the wide lawns, under the bending trees—whither, on four red-marked occasions, he had watched her disappear—towards the castle, which faced him in its vast irregular picturesqueness. There were the oldest portions, grimly mediaeval, a lakeside fortress, with ponderous round towers, meurtrieres, machiolations, its grey stone walls discoloured in fantastic streaks and patches by weather-stains and lichens, or else shaggily overgrown by creepers. Then there were later portions, rectangular, pink-stuccoed, with rusticated work at the corners, and, on the blank spaces between the windows, quaint allegorical frescoes, faded, half washed-out. And then there were entirely modern-looking portions, of gleaming marble, with numberless fanciful carvings, spires, pinnacles, reliefs—wonderfully light, gay, habitable, and (Peter thought) beautiful, in the clear Italian atmosphere, against the blue Italian sky.

"It's a perfect house for her," he said. "It suits her—like an appropriate garment; it almost seems to express her."

And all the while, as he proceeded, her voice kept sounding in his ears; scraps of her conversation, phrases that she had spoken, kept coming back to him.

One end of the long, wide marble terrace had been arranged as a sort of out-of-door living-room. A white awning was stretched overhead; warm-hued rugs were laid on the pavement; there were wicker lounging-chairs, with bright cushions, and a little table, holding books and things.

The Duchessa rose from one of the lounging-chairs, and came forward, smiling, to meet him.

She gave him her hand—for the first time.

It was warm—electrically warm; and it was soft—womanly soft; and it was firm, alive—it spoke of a vitality, a temperament. Peter was sure, besides, that it would be sweet to smell; and he longed to bend over it, and press it with his lips. He might almost have done so, according to Italian etiquette. But, of course, he simply bowed over it, and let it go.

"Mi trova abbandonata," she said, leading the way back to the terrace-end. There were notes of a peculiar richness in her voice, when she spoke Italian; and she dwelt languorously on the vowels, and rather slurred the consonants, lazily, in the manner Italian women have, whereby they give the quality of velvet to their tongue. She was not an Italian woman; Heaven be praised, she was English: so this was just pure gain to the sum-total of her graces. "My uncle and my niece have gone to the village. But I 'm expecting them to come home at any moment now—and you'll not have long, I hope, to wait for your snuff."

She flashed a whimsical little smile into his eyes. Then she returned to her wicker chair, glancing an invitation at Peter to place himself in the one facing her. She leaned back, resting her head on a pink silk cushion.

Peter, no doubt, sent up a silent prayer that her uncle and her niece might be detained at the village for the rest of the afternoon. By her niece he took her to mean Emilia: he liked her for the kindly euphemism. "What hair she has!" he thought, admiring the loose brown masses, warm upon their background of pink silk.

"Oh, I'm inured to waiting," he replied, with a retrospective mind for the interminable waits of that interminable day.

The Duchessa had taken a fan from the table, and was playing with it, opening and shutting it slowly, in her lap. Now she caught Peter's eyes examining it, and she gave it to him. (My own suspicion is that Peter's eyes had been occupied rather with the hands that held the fan, than with the fan itself—but that's a detail.)

"I picked it up the other day, in Rome," she said. "Of course, it's an imitation of the French fans of the last century, but I thought it pretty."

It was of white silk, that had been thinly stained a soft yellow, like the yellow of faded yellow rose-leaves. It was painted with innumerable plump little cupids, flying among pale clouds. The sticks were of mother-of=pearl. The end-sticks were elaborately incised, and in the incisions opals were set, big ones and small ones, smouldering with green and scarlet fires.

"Very pretty indeed," said Peter, "and very curious. It's like a great butterfly's wing is n't it? But are n't you afraid of opals?"

"Afraid of opals?" she wondered. "Why should one be?"

"Unless your birthday happens to fall in October, they're reputed to bring bad luck," he reminded her.

"My birthday happens to fall in June but I 'll never believe that such pretty things as opals can bring bad luck," she laughed, taking the fan, which he returned to her, and stroking one of the bigger opals with her finger tip.

"Have you no superstitions?" he asked.

"I hope not—I don't think I have," she answered. "We're not allowed to have superstitions, you know—nous autres Catholiques."

"Oh?" he said, with surprise. "No, I did n't know."

"Yes, they're a forbidden luxury. But you—? Are you superstitious? Would you be afraid of opals?"

"I doubt if I should have the courage to wear one. At all events, I don't regard superstitions in the light of a luxury. I should be glad to be rid of those I have. They're a horrible inconvenience. But I can't get it out of my head that the air is filled with a swarm of malignant little devils, who are always watching their chance to do us an ill turn. We don't in the least know the conditions under which they can bring it off; but it's legendary that if we wear opals, or sit thirteen at table, or start an enterprise on Friday, or what not, we somehow give them their opportunity. And one naturally wishes to be on the safe side."

She looked at him with doubt, considering.

"You don't seriously believe all that?" she said.

"No, I don't seriously believe it. But one breathes it in with the air of one's nursery, and it sticks. I don't believe it, but I fear it just enough to be made uneasy. The evil eye, for instance. How can one spend any time in Italy, where everybody goes loaded with charms against it, and help having a sort of sneaking half-belief in the evil eye?"

She shook her head, laughing.

"I 've spent a good deal of time in Italy, but I have n't so much as a sneaking quarter-belief in it."

"I envy you your strength of mind," said he. "But surely, though superstition is a luxury forbidden to Catholics, there are plenty of good Catholics who indulge in it, all the same?"

"There are never plenty of good Catholics," said sire. "You employ a much-abused expression. To profess the Catholic faith, to go to Mass on Sunday and abstain from meat on Friday, that is by no means sufficient to constitute a good Catholic. To be a good Catholic one would have to be a saint, nothing less—and not a mere formal saint, either, but a very real saint, a saint in thought and feeling, as well as in speech and action. Just in so far as one is superstitious, one is a bad Catholic. Oh, if the world were populated by good Catholics, it would be the Millennium come to pass."

"It would be that, if it were populated by good Christians—wouldn't it?" asked Peter.

"The terms are interchangeable," she answered sweetly, with a half-comical look of defiance.

"Mercy!" cried he. "Can't a Protestant be a good Christian too?"

"Yes," she said, "because a Protestant can be a Catholic without knowing it."

"Oh—?" he puzzled, frowning.

"It's quite simple," she explained. "You can't be a Christian unless you're a Catholic. But if you believe as much of Christian truth as you've ever had a fair opportunity of learning, and if you try to live in accordance with Christian morals, you are a Catholic, you're a member of the Catholic Church, whether you know it or not. You can't be deprived of your birthright, you see."

"That seems rather broad," said Peter; "and one had always heard that Catholicism was nothing if not narrow."

"How could it be Catholic if it were narrow?" asked she. "However, if a Protestant uses his intelligence, and is logical, he'll not remain an unconscious Catholic long. If he studies the matter, and is logical, he'll wish to unite himself to the Church in her visible body. Look at England. See how logic is multiplying converts year by year."

"But it's the glory of Englishmen to be illogical," said Peter, with a laugh. "Our capacity for not following premisses to their logical consequences is the principal source of our national greatness. So the bulk of the English are likely to resist conversion for centuries to come—are they not? And then, nowadays, one is so apt to be an indifferentist in matters of religion—and Catholicism is so exacting. One remains a Protestant from the love of ease."

"And from the desire, on the part of a good many Englishmen at least, to sail in a boat of their own—not to get mixed up with a lot of foreign publicans and sinners—no?" she suggested.

"Oh, of course, we're insular and we're Pharisaical," admitted Peter.

"And as for one's indifference," she smiled, "that is most probably due to one's youth and inexperience. One can't come to close quarters with the realities of life—with sorrow, with great joy, with temptation, with sin or with heroic virtue, with death, with the birth of a new soul, with any of the awful, wonderful realities of life—and continue to be an indifferentist in matters of religion, do you think?"

"When one comes to close quarters with the awful, wonderful realities of life, one has religious moments," he acknowledged. "But they're generally rather fugitive, are n't they?"

"One can cultivate them—one can encourage them," she said. "If you would care to know a good Catholic," she added, "my niece, my little ward, Emilia is one. She wants to become a Sister of Mercy, to spend her life nursing the poor."

"Oh? Would n't that be rather a pity?" Peter said. "She's so extremely pretty. I don't know when I have seen prettier brown eyes than hers."

"Well, in a few years, I expect we shall see those pretty brown eyes looking out from under a sister's coif. No, I don't think it will be a pity. Nuns and sisters, I think, are the happiest people in the world—and priests. Have you ever met any one who seemed happier than my uncle, for example?"

"I have certainly never met any one who seemed sweeter, kinder," Peter confessed. "He has a wonderful old face."

"He's a wonderful old man," said she. "I 'm going to try to keep him a prisoner here for the rest of the summer—though he will have it that he's just run down for a week. He works a great deal too hard when he's in Rome. He's the only Cardinal I've ever heard of, who takes practical charge of his titular church. But here in the country he's out-of-doors all the blessed day, hand in hand with Emilia. He's as young as she is, I believe. They play together like children—and make—me feel as staid and solemn and grown-up as one of Mr. Kenneth Grahame's Olympians."

Peter laughed. Then, in the moment of silence that followed, he happened to let his eyes stray up the valley.

"Hello!" he suddenly exclaimed. "Someone has been painting our mountain green."

The Duchessa turned, to look; and she too uttered an exclamation.

By some accident of reflection or refraction, the snows of Monte Sfiorito had become bright green, as if the light that fell on them had passed through emeralds. They both paused, to gaze and marvel for a little. Indeed, the prospect was a pleasing one, as well as a surprising—the sunny lawns, the high trees, the blue lake, and then that bright green mountain.

"I have never known anything like those snow-peaks for sailing under false colours," Peter said. "I have seen them every colour of the calendar, except their native white."

"You must n't blame the poor things," pleaded the Duchessa. "They can't help it. It's all along o' the distance and the atmosphere and the sun."

She closed her fan, with which she had been more or less idly playing throughout their dialogue, and replaced it on the table. Among the books there—French books, for the most part, in yellow paper—Peter saw, with something of a flutter (he could never see it without something of a flutter), the grey-and-gold binding of "A Man of Words."

The Duchessa caught his glance.

"Yes," she said; "your friend's novel. I told you I had been re-reading it."

"Yes," said he.

"And—do you know—I 'm inclined to agree with your own enthusiastic estimate of it?" she went on. "I think it's extremely—but extremely—clever; and more—very charming, very beautiful. The fatal gift of beauty!"

And her smile reminded him that the application of the tag was his own.

"Yes," said he.

"Its beauty, though," she reflected, "is n't exactly of the obvious sort—is it? It does n't jump at you, for instance. It is rather in the texture of the work, than on the surface. One has to look, to see it."

"One always has to look, to see beauty that is worth seeing," he safely generalised. But then—he had put his foot in the stirrup—his hobby bolted with him. "It takes two to make a beautiful object. The eye of the beholder is every bit as indispensable as the hand of the artist. The artist does his work—the beholder must do his. They are collaborators. Each must be the other's equal; and they must also be like each other—with the likeness of opposites, of complements. Art, in short, is entirely a matter of reciprocity. The kind of beauty that jumps at you is the kind you end by getting heartily tired of—is the skin-deep kind; and therefore it is n't really beauty at all—it is only an approximation to beauty—it may be only a simulacrum of it."

Her eyes were smiling, her face was glowing, softly, with interest, with friendliness and perhaps with the least suspicion of something else—perhaps with the faintest glimmer of suppressed amusement; but interest was easily predominant.

"Yes," she assented.... But then she pursued her own train of ideas. "And—with you—I particularly like the woman—Pauline. I can't tell you how much I like her. I—it sounds extravagant, but it's true—I can think of no other woman in the whole of fiction whom I like so well—who makes so curiously personal an appeal to me. Her wit—her waywardness—her tenderness—her generosity—everything. How did your friend come by his conception of her? She's as real to me as any woman I have ever known she's more real to me than most of the women I know—she's absolutely real, she lives, she breathes. Yet I have never known a woman resembling her. Life would be a merrier business if one did know women resembling her. She seems to me all that a woman ought ideally to be. Does your friend know women like that—the lucky man? Or is Pauline, for all her convincingness, a pure creature of imagination?"

"Ah," said Peter, laughing, "you touch the secret springs of my friend's inspiration. That is a story in itself. Felix Wildmay is a perfectly commonplace Englishman. How could a woman like Pauline be the creature of his imagination? No—she was a 'thing seen.' God made her. Wildmay was a mere copyist. He drew her, tant bien que mal, from the life from a woman who's actually alive on this dull globe to-day. But that's the story."

The Duchessa's eyes were intent.

"The story-? Tell me the story," she pronounced in a breath, with imperious eagerness.

And her eyes waited, intently.

"Oh," said Peter, "it's one of those stories that can scarcely be told. There's hardly any thing to take hold of. It's without incident, without progression—it's all subjective—it's a drama in states of mind. Pauline was a 'thing seen,' indeed; but she wasn't a thing known: she was a thing divined. Wildmay never knew her—never even knew who she was—never knew her name—never even knew her nationality, though, as the book shows, he guessed her to be an Englishwoman, married to a Frenchman. He simply saw her, from a distance, half-a-dozen times perhaps. He saw her in Paris, once or twice, at the theatre, at the opera; and then later again, once or twice, in London; and then, once more, in Paris, in the Bois. That was all, but that was enough. Her appearance—her face, her eyes, her smile, her way of carrying herself, her way of carrying her head, her gestures, her movements, her way of dressing—he never so much as heard her voice—her mere appearance made an impression on him such as all the rest of womankind had totally failed to make. She was exceedingly lovely, of course, exceedingly distinguished, noble-looking; but she was infinitely more. Her face her whole person—had an expression! A spirit burned in her—a prismatic, aromatic fire. Other women seemed dust, seemed dead, beside her. She was a garden, inexhaustible, of promises, of suggestions. Wit, capriciousness, generosity, emotion—you have said it—they were all there. Race was there, nerve. Sex was there—all the mystery, magic, all the essential, elemental principles of the Feminine, were there: she was a woman. A wonderful, strenuous soul was there: Wildmay saw it, felt it. He did n't know her—he had no hope of ever knowing her—but he knew her better than he knew any one else in the world. She became the absorbing subject of his thoughts, the heroine of his dreams. She became, in fact, the supreme influence of his life."

The Duchessa's eyes had not lost their intentness, while he was speaking. Now that he had finished, she looked down at her hands, folded in her lap, and mused for a moment in silence. At last she looked up again.

"It's as strange as anything I have ever heard," she said, "it's furiously strange—and romantic—and interesting. But—but—" She frowned a little, hesitating between a choice of questions.

"Oh, it's a story all compact of 'buts,'" Peter threw out laughing.

She let the remark pass her—she had settled upon her question.

"But how could he endure such a situation?" she asked. "How could he sit still under it? Did n't he try in any way—did n't he make any effort at all—to—to find her out—to discover who she was—to get introduced to her? I should think he could never have rested—I should think he would have moved heaven and earth."

"What could he do? Tell me a single thing he could have done," said Peter. "Society has made no provision for a case like his. It 's absurd—but there it is. You see a woman somewhere; you long to make her acquaintance; and there's no natural bar to your doing so—you 're a presentable man she's what they call a lady—you're both, more or less, of the same monde. Yet there 's positively no way known by which you can contrive it—unless chance, mere fortuitous chance, just happens to drop a common acquaintance between you, at the right time and place. Chance, in Wildmay's case, happened to drop all the common acquaintances they may possibly have had at a deplorable distance. He was alone on each of the occasions when he saw her. There was no one he could ask to introduce him; there was no one he could apply to for information concerning her. He could n't very well follow her carriage through the streets—dog her to her lair, like a detective. Well—what then?"

The Duchessa was playing with her fan again.

"No," she agreed; "I suppose it was hopeless. But it seems rather hard on the poor man—rather baffling and tantalising."

"The poor man thought it so, to be sure," said Peter; "he fretted and fumed a good deal, and kicked against the pricks. Here, there, now, anon, he would enjoy his brief little vision of her—then she would vanish into the deep inane. So, in the end—he had to take it out in something—he took it out in writing a book about her. He propped up a mental portrait of her on his desk before him, and translated it into the character of Pauline. In that way he was able to spend long delightful hours alone with her every day, in a kind of metaphysical intimacy. He had never heard her voice—but now he heard it as often as Pauline opened her lips. He owned her—he possessed her—she lived under his roof—she was always waiting for him in his study. She is real to you? She was inexpressibly, miraculously real to him. He saw her, knew her, felt her, realised her, in every detail of her mind, her soul, her person—down to the very intonations of her speech—down to the veins in her hands, the rings on her fingers—down to her very furs and laces, the frou-frou of her skirts, the scent upon her pocket-handkerchief. He had numbered the hairs of her head, almost."

Again the Duchessa mused for a while in silence, opening and shutting her fan, and gazing into its opals.

"I am thinking of it from the woman's point of view," she said, by and by. "To have played such a part in a man's life—and never to have dreamed it! Never even, very likely, to have dreamed that such a man existed—for it's entirely possible she didn't notice him, on those occasions when he saw her. And to have been the subject of such a novel—and never to have dreamed that, either! To have read the novel perhaps—without dreaming for an instant that there was any sort of connection between Pauline and herself! Or else—what would almost be stranger still—not to have read the novel, not to have heard of it! To have inspired such a book, such a beautiful book—yet to remain in sheer unconscious ignorance that there was such a book! Oh, I think it is even more extraordinary from the woman's point of view than from the man's. There is something almost terrifying about it. To have had such an influence on the destiny of someone you've never heard of! There's a kind of intangible sense of a responsibility."

"There is also, perhaps," laughed Peter, "a kind of intangible sense of a liberty taken. I'm bound to say I think Wildmay was decidedly at his ease. To appropriate in that cool fashion the personality of a total stranger! But artists are the most unprincipled folk unhung. Ils prennent leur bien la, ou ils le trouvent."

"Oh, no," said the Duchessa, "I think she was fair game. One can carry delicacy too far. He was entitled to the benefits of his discovery—for, after all, it was a discovery, was n't it? You have said yourself how indispensable the eye of the beholder is—'the seeing eye.' I think, indeed, the whole affair speaks extremely well for Mr. Wildmay. It is not every man who would be capable of so purely intellectual a passion. I suppose one must call his feeling for her a passion? It indicates a distinction in his nature. He can hardly be a mere materialist. But—but I think it's heart-rending that he never met her."

"Oh, but that's the continuation of the story," said Peter. "He did meet her in the end, you know."

"He did meet her!" cried the Duchessa, starting up, with a sudden access of interest, whilst her eyes lightened. "He did meet her? Oh, you must tell me about that."

And just at this crisis the Cardinal and Emilia appeared, climbing the terrace steps.

"Bother!" exclaimed the Duchessa, under her breath. Then, to Peter, "It will have to be for another time—unless I die of the suspense."

After the necessary greetings were transacted, another elderly priest joined the company; a tall, burly, rather florid man, mentioned, when Peter was introduced to him, as Monsignor Langshawe. "This really is her chaplain," Peter concluded. Then a servant brought tea.

"Ah, Diamond, Diamond, you little know what mischief you might have wrought," he admonished himself, as he walked home through the level sunshine. "In another instant, if we'd not been interrupted, you would have let the cat out of the bag. The premature escape of the cat from the bag would spoil everything."

And he hugged himself, as one snatched from peril, in a qualm of retroactive terror. At the same time he was filled with a kind of exultancy. All that he had hoped had come to pass, and more, vastly more. Not only had he been received as a friend at Ventirose, but he had been encouraged to tell her a part at least of the story by which her life and his were so curiously connected; and he had been snatched from the peril of telling her too much. The day was not yet when he could safely say, "Mutato nomine....." Would the day ever be? But, meanwhile, just to have told her the first ten lines of that story, he could not help feeling, somehow advanced matters tremendously, somehow put a new face on matters.

"The hour for which the ages sighed may not be so far away as you think," he said to Marietta. "The curtain has risen upon Act Three. I fancy I can perceive faint glimmerings of the beginning of the end."



XIX

All that evening, something which he had not been conscious of noticing especially when it was present to him—certainly he had paid no conscious attention to its details—kept recurring and recurring to Peter's memory: the appearance of the prettily-arranged terrace-end at Ventirose: the white awning, with the blue sky at its edges, the sunny park beyond; the warm-hued carpets on the marble pavement; the wicker chairs, with their bright cushions; the table, with its books and bibelots—the yellow French books, a tortoise-shell paperknife, a silver paperweight, a crystal smelling-bottle, a bowlful of drooping poppies; and the marble balustrade, with its delicate tracery of leaves and tendrils, where the jessamine twined round its pillars.

This kept recurring, recurring, vividly, a picture that he could see without closing his eyes, a picture with a very decided sentiment. Like the gay and gleaming many-pinnacled facade of her house, it seemed appropriate to her; it seemed in its fashion to express her. Nay, it seemed to do more. It was a corner of her every-day environment; these things were the companions, the witnesses, of moments of her life, phases of herself, which were hidden from Peter; they were the companions and witnesses of her solitude, her privacy; they were her confidants, in a way. They seemed not merely to express her, therefore, but to be continually on the point—I had almost said of betraying her. At all events, if he could only understand their silent language, they would prove rich in precious revelations. So he welcomed their recurrences, dwelt upon them, pondered them, and got a deep if somewhat inarticulate pleasure from them.

On Thursday, as he approached the castle, the last fires of sunset were burning in the sky behind it—the long irregular mass of buildings stood out in varying shades of blue, against varying, dying shades of red: the grey stone, dark, velvety indigo; the pink stucco, pink still, but with a transparent blue penumbra over it; the white marble, palely, scintillantly amethystine. And if he was interested in her environment, now he could study it to his heart's content: the wide marble staircase, up which he was shown, with its crimson carpet, and the big mellow painting, that looked as if it might be a Titian, at the top; the great saloon, in which he was received, with its polished mosaic floor, its frescoed ceiling, its white-and-gold panelling, its hangings and upholsteries of yellow brocade, its satinwood chairs and tables, its bronzes, porcelains, embroideries, its screens and mirrors; the long dining-hall, with its high pointed windows, its slender marble columns supporting a vaulted roof, its twinkling candles in chandeliers and sconces of cloudy Venetian glass, its brilliant table, its flowers and their colours and their scents.

He could study her environment to his heart's content, indeed—or to his heart's despair. For all this had rather the effect of chilling, of depressing him. It was very splendid; it was very luxurious and cheerful; it was appropriate and personal to her, if you like; no doubt, in its fashion, in its measure, it, too, expressed her. But, at that rate, it expressed her in an aspect which Peter had instinctively made it his habit to forget, which he by no means found it inspiriting to remember. It expressed, it emphasised, her wealth, her rank; it emphasised the distance, in a worldly sense, between her and himself, the conventional barriers.

And she...

She was very lovely, she was entirely cordial, friendly, she was all that she had ever been—and yet—and yet—Well, somehow, she seemed indefinably different. Somehow, again, the distance, the barriers, were emphasised. She was very lovely, she was entirely cordial, friendly, she was all that she had ever been; but, somehow, to-night, she seemed very much the great lady, very much the duchess....

"My dear man," he said to himself, "you were mad to dream for a single instant that there was the remotest possibility of anything ever happening."

The only other guests, besides the Cardinal and Monsignor Langshawe, were an old Frenchwoman, with beautiful white hair, from one of the neighbouring villas, Madame de Lafere, and a young, pretty, witty, and voluble Irishwoman, Mrs. O'Donovan Florence, from an hotel at Spiaggia. In deference, perhaps, to the cloth of the two ecclesiastics, none of the women were in full evening-dress, and there was no arm-taking when they went in to dinner. The dinner itself was of a simplicity which Peter thought admirable, and which, of course, he attributed to his Duchessa's own good taste. He was not yet familiar enough with the Black aristocracy of Italy, to be aware that in the matter of food and drink simplicity is as much the criterion of good form amongst them, as lavish complexity is the criterion of good form amongst the English-imitating Whites.

The conversation, I believe, took its direction chiefly from the initiative of Mrs. O'Donovan Florence. With great sprightliness and humour, and with an astonishing light-hearted courage, she rallied the Cardinal upon the neglect in which her native island was allowed to languish by the powers at Rome. "The most Catholic country in three hemispheres, to be sure," she said; "every inch of its soil soaked with the blood of martyrs. Yet you've not added an Irish saint to the Calendar for I see you're blushing to think how many ages; and you've taken sides with the heretic Saxon against us in our struggle for Home Rule—which I blame you for, though, being a landowner and a bit of an absentee, I 'm a traitorous Unionist myself."

The Cardinal laughingly retorted that the Irish were far too fine, too imaginative and poetical a race, to be bothered with material questions of government and administration. They should leave such cares to the stolid, practical English, and devote the leisure they would thus obtain to the further exercise and development of what someone had called "the starfire of the Celtic nature." Ireland should look upon England as her working-housekeeper. And as for the addition of Irish saints to the Calendar, the stumbling-block was their excessive number. "'T is an embarrassment of riches. If we were once to begin, we could never leave off till we had canonised nine-tenths of the dead population."

Monsignor Langshawe, at this (making jest the cue for earnest), spoke up for Scotland, and deplored the delay in the beatification of Blessed Mary. "The official beatification," he discriminated, "for she was beatified in the heart of every true Catholic Scot on the day when Bloody Elizabeth murdered her."

And Madame de Lafere put in a plea for Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, and the little Dauphin.

"Blessed Mary—Bloody Elizabeth," laughed the Duchessa, in an aside to Peter; "here is language to use in the presence of a Protestant Englishman."