The day grew very hot, and Eleanor suffered visibly, even though the quality of the air remained throughout pure and fresh, and Lucy in the shelter of the broad loggia felt nothing but a keen physical enjoyment of the glow and blaze that held the outer world.

After their midday meal Lucy was sitting idly on the outer wall of the loggia which commanded the bit of road just outside the convent, when she perceived a figure mounting the hill.

'Father Benecke!' she said to Eleanor. 'What a climb for him in this heat! Did you say he had gone to Selvapendente? Poor old man!—how hot and tired he looks!—and with that heavy parcel too!'

And withdrawing herself a little out of sight she watched the priest. He had just paused in a last patch of shade to take breath after the long ascent. Depositing the bundle he had been carrying on a wayside stone, he took out his large coloured handkerchief and mopped the perspiration from his face with long sighs of exhaustion. Then with his hands on his sides he looked round him. Opposite to him was a little shrine, with the usual rude fresco and enthroned Madonna behind a grating. The priest walked over to it, and knelt down.

In a few minutes he returned and took up his parcel. As he entered the outer gate of the convent, Lucy could see him glancing nervously from side to side. But it was the hour of siesta and of quiet. His tormentors of the morning were all under cover.

The parcel that he carried had partly broken out of its wrappings during the long walk, and Lucy could see that it contained clothes of some kind.

'Poor Father!' she said again to Eleanor. 'Couldn't he have got some boy to carry that for him? How I should like to rest him and give him some coffee? Shall I send Cecco to ask him to come here?'

Eleanor shook her head.

'Better not. He wouldn't come. We shall have to tame him like a bird.'

The hours passed on. At last the western sun began to creep round into the loggia. The empty cells on the eastern side were now cool, but they looked upon the inner cloistered court which was alive with playing children, and all the farm life. Eleanor shrank both from noise and spectators. Yet she grew visibly more tired and restless, and Lucy went out to reconnoitre. She came back recommending a descent into the forest.

So they braved a few yards of sun-scorched road and plunged into a little right-hand track, which led downward through a thick undergrowth of heath and arbutus towards what seemed the cool heart of the woods.

Presently they came to a small gate, and beyond appeared a broad, well-kept path, winding in zig-zags along the forest-covered side of the hill.

'This must be private,' said Eleanor, looking at the gate in some doubt.
'And there you see is the Palazzo Guerrini.'

She pointed. Above them through a gap in the trees showed the great yellow pile on the edge of the plateau, the forest stretching steeply up to it and enveloping it from below.

'There is nothing to stop us,' said Lucy. 'They won't turn us out, if it is theirs. I can't have you go through that sun again.'

And she pressed on, looking for shade and rest.

But soon she stopped, with a little cry, and they both stood looking in astonishment at the strange and lovely thing upon which they had stumbled unawares.

'I know!' cried Lucy. 'The woman at the convent tried to tell me—and I couldn't understand. She said we must see the "Sassetto"—that it was a wonder—and all the strangers thought so. And it is a wonder! And so cool!'

Down from the very brow of the hill, in an age before man was born, the giant force of some primeval convulsion had flung a lava torrent of molten rock to the bed of the Paglia. And there still was the torrent—a rock-stream composed of huge blocks of basalt—flowing in one vast steep fall, a couple of hundred yards wide, through the forest from top to bottom of the hill.

And very grim and stern would that rock-river have been but for Italy, and the powers of the Italian soil. But the forest and its lovely undergrowths, its heaths and creepers, its ferns and periwinkles, its lichen and mosses had thrown themselves on the frozen lava, had decked and softened its wild shapes, had reared oaks and pines amid the clefts of basalt, and planted all the crannies below with lighter, featherier green, till in the dim forest light all that had once been terror had softened into grace, and Nature herself had turned her freak to poetry.

And throughout the 'Sassetto' there reigned a peculiar and delicious coolness—the blended breath of mountain and forest. The smooth path that Eleanor and Lucy had been following wound in and out among the strange rock-masses, bearing the signs of having been made at great cost and difficulty. Soon, also, benches of grey stone began to mark the course of it at frequent intervals.

'We must live here!' cried Lucy in enchantment. 'Let me spread the shawl for you—there!—just in front of that glimpse of the river.'

They had turned a corner of the path. Lucy, whose gaze was fixed upon the blue distance towards Orvieto, heard a hurried word from Eleanor, looked round, and saw Father Benecke just rising from a seat in front.

A shock ran through her. The priest stood hesitating and miserable before them, a hot colour suffusing his hollow cheeks. Lucy saw that he was no longer in clerical dress. He wore a grey alpaca suit, and a hat of fine Leghorn straw with a broad black ribbon. Both ladies almost feared to speak to him.

Then Lucy ran forward, her cheeks too a bright red, her eyes wet and sparkling. 'How do you do, Father Benecke? You won't remember me, but I was just introduced to you that day at luncheon—don't you remember—on the Aventine?'

The priest took her offered hand, and looked at her in astonishment.

'Yes—I remember—you were with Miss Manisty.'

'I wish you had asked me to come with you this morning,' cried the girl suddenly. 'I'd have helped you carry that parcel up the hill. It was too much for you in the heat.'

Her face expressed the sweetest, most passionate sympathy, the indignant homage of youth to old age unjustly wounded and forsaken. Eleanor was no less surprised than Father Benecke. Was this the stiff, the reticent Lucy?

The priest struggled for composure, and smiled as he withdrew his hand.

'You would have found it a long way, Signorina. I tried to get a boy at
Selvapendente, but no one would serve me.'

He paused a moment, then resumed speaking with a sort of passionate reluctance, his eyes upon the ground.

'I am a suspended priest—and the Bishop of Orvieto has notified the fact to his clergy. The news was soon known through the whole district. And now it seems the people hate me. They will do nothing for me. Nay, if they could, they would willingly do me an injury.'

The flush had died out of the old cheeks. He stood bareheaded before them, the tonsure showing plainly amid his still thick white locks—the delicate face and hair, like a study in ivory and silver, thrown out against the deep shadows of the Sassetto.

'Father, won't you sit down and tell me about it all?' said Eleanor gently.
'You didn't send me away, you know—the other day—at the villa.'

The priest sighed and hesitated. 'I don't know, Madame, why I should trouble you with my poor story.

'It would not trouble me. Besides, I know so much of it already.'

She pointed to the bench he had just left.

'And I,' said Lucy, 'will go and fetch a book I left in the loggia. Father Benecke, Mrs. Burgoyne is not strong. She has walked more than enough. Will you kindly make her rest while I am gone?'

She fixed upon him her kind beseeching eyes. The sympathy, the homage of the two women enveloped the old man. His brow cleared a little.

She sped down the winding path, aglow with anger and pity. The priest's crushed strength and humiliated age—what a testimony to the power of that tradition for which Mr. Manisty was working—its unmerciful and tyrannous power!

Why such a penalty for a 'mildly Liberal' book?—'a fraction of the truth'? She could hear Manisty's ironic voice on that bygone drive to Nemi. If he saw his friend now, would he still excuse—defend?—

Her thoughts wrestled with him hotly—then withdrew themselves in haste, and fled the field.

* * * * *

Meanwhile Father Benecke's reserve had gradually yielded. He gave Eleanor a long troubled look, and said at last, very simply—

'Madame, you see a man broken hearted—'

He stopped, staring desolately at the ground. Eleanor threw in a few gentle words and phrases, and presently he again mustered courage to speak:

'You remember, Madame, that my letter was sent to the Osservatore Romano after a pledge had been given to me that only the bare fact of my submission, the mere formula that attends the withdrawal of any book that has been placed upon the Index, should be given to the public. Then my letter appeared. And suddenly it all became clear to me. I cannot explain it. It was with me as it was with St. Paul: "Placuit Domino ut revelaret filium suum in me!" My heart rose up and said: "Thou hast betrayed the truth"—"Tradidisti Sanctum et Justum!" After I left you that day I wrote withdrawing my letter and my submission. And I sent a copy to one of the Liberal papers. Then my heart smote me. One of the Cardinals of the Holy Office had treated me with much kindness. I wrote to him—I tried to explain what I had done. I wrote to several other persons at the Vatican, complaining of the manner in which I had been dealt with. No answer—not one. All were silent—as though I were already a dead man. Then I tried to see one or two of my old friends. But no one would receive me; one and all turned me from their doors. So then I left Rome. But I could not make up my mind to go home till I knew the worst. You understand, Madame, that I have been a Professor of Theology; that my Faculty can remove me—that my Faculty obeys the Bishops, and the Bishops obey the Holy See. I remembered this place—I left my address in Rome—and I came down here to wait. Ah! it was not long!'

He drew himself up, smiling bitterly.

'Two days after I arrived here I received two letters simultaneously—one from my Bishop, the other from the Council of my Faculty—suspending me both from my priestly and my academical functions. By the next post arrived a communication from the Bishop of this diocese, forbidding me the Sacraments.'

He paused. The mere recital of his case had brought him again into the bewilderment of that mental anguish he had gone through. Eleanor made a murmur of sympathy. He faced her with a sudden ardour.

'I had expected it, Madame; but when it came I was stunned—I was bowed to the earth. A few days later, I received an anonymous letter—from Orvieto, I think—reminding me that a priest suspended a divinis has no right to the soutane. "Let the traitor," it said, "give up the uniform he has disgraced—let him at least have the decency to do that." In my trouble I had not thought of it. So I wrote to a friend in Rome to send me clothes.'

Eleanor's eyes filled with tears. She thought of the old man staggering alone up the dusty hill under his unwelcome burden.

He himself was looking down at his new clothes in a kind of confusion. Suddenly he said under his breath, 'And for what?—because I said what every educated man in Europe knows to be true?'

'Father,' said Eleanor, longing to express some poor word of comfort and respect, 'you have suffered greatly—you will suffer—but it is not for yourself.'

He shook his head.

'Madame, you see a man dying of hunger and thirst! He cannot cheat himself with fine words. He starves!'

She stared at him, startled—partly understanding.

'For forty-two years,' he said, in a low, pathetic voice, 'have I received my Lord—day after day—without a break. And now "they have taken Him away—and I know not where they have laid Him!"'

Nothing could be more desolate than tone and look. Eleanor understood. She had seen this hunger before. She remembered a convent in Rome where on Good Fridays some of the nuns were often ill with restlessness and longing, because for twenty-four hours the Sacrament was not upon the altar.

Under the protection of her reverent and pitying silence he gradually recovered himself. With great delicacy, with fine and chosen words, she began to try and comfort him, dwelling on his comradeship with all the martyrs of the world, on the help and support that would certainly gather round him, on the new friends that would replace the old. And as she talked there grew up in her mind an envy of him so passionate, so intense, that she could have thrown herself at his feet there and then and opened her own wretched heart to him.

He, tortured by the martyrdom of thought, by the loss of Christian fellowship!—She, scorched and consumed by a passion that was perfectly ready to feed itself on the pain and injury of the beloved, or the innocent, as soon as its own selfish satisfaction was denied it! There was a moment when she felt herself unworthy to breathe the same air with him.

She stared at him, frowning and pale, her hand clasping her breast, lest he should hear the beating of her heart.

* * * * *

Then the hand dropped. The inner tumult passed. And at the same moment the sound of steps was heard approaching.

Round the further corner of the path came two ladies, descending towards them. They were both dressed in deep mourning. The first was an old woman, powerfully and substantially built. Her grey hair, raised in a sort of toupÉ under her plain black bonnet, framed a broad and noticeable brow, black eyes, and other features that were both benevolent and strong. She was very pale, and her face expressed a haunting and prevailing sorrow. Eleanor noticed that she was walking alone, some distance ahead of her companion, and that she had gathered up her black skirts in an ungloved hand, with an absent disregard of appearances. Behind her came a younger lady, a sallow and pinched woman of about thirty, very slight and tall.

As they passed Eleanor and her companion, the elder woman threw a lingering glance at the strangers. The scrutiny of it was perhaps somewhat imperious. The younger lady walked past stiffly with her eyes on the ground.

Eleanor and Father Benecke were naturally silent as they passed. Eleanor had just begun to speak again when she heard herself suddenly addressed in French.

She looked up in astonishment and saw that the old lady had returned and was standing before her.

'Madame—you allow me to address you?'

Eleanor bowed.

'You are staying at Santa TrinitÀ, I believe!'

'Oui, Madame. We arrived yesterday.'

The Contessa's examining eye, whereof the keenness was but just duly chastened by courtesy, took note of that delicate and frail refinement which belonged both to Eleanor's person and dress.

'I fear, Madame, you are but roughly housed at the TrinitÀ. They are not accustomed to English ladies. If my daughter and I, who are residents here, can be of any service to you, I beg that you will command us.'

Eleanor felt nothing but an angry impatience. Could even this remote place give them no privacy? She answered however with her usual grace.

'You are very good, Madame. I suppose that I am speaking to the Contessa
Guerrini?'

The other lady made a sign of assent.

'We brought a few things from Orvieto—my friend and I,' Eleanor continued.
'We shall only stay a few weeks. I think we have all that is necessary. But
I am very grateful to you for your courtesy.'

Her manner, however, expressed no effusion, hardly even adequate response.
The Contessa understood. She talked for a few moments, gave a few
directions as to paths and points of view, pointed out a drive beyond
Selvapendente on the mountain side, bowed and departed.

Her bow did not include the priest. But he was not conscious of it. While the ladies talked, he had stood apart, holding the hat that seemed to burn him, in his finger-tips, his eyes, with their vague and troubled intensity, expressing only that inward vision which is at once the paradise and the torment of the prophet.

* * * * *

Three weeks passed away. Eleanor had said no more of further travelling. For some days she lived in terror, startled by the least sound upon the road. Then, as it seemed to Lucy, she resigned herself to trust in Father Benecke's discretion, influenced also no doubt by the sense of her own physical weakness, and piteous need of rest.

And now—in these first days of July—their risk was no doubt much less than it had been. Manisty had not remembered Torre Amiata—another thorn in Eleanor's heart! He must have left Italy. As each fresh morning dawned, she assured herself drearily that they were safe enough.

As for the heat, the sun indeed was lord and master of this central Italy. Yet on the high tableland of Torre Amiata the temperature was seldom oppressive. Lucy, indeed, soon found out from her friend the Carabiniere that while malaria haunted the valley, and scourged the region of Bolsena to the south, the characteristic disease of their upland was pneumonia, caused by the daily ascent of the labourers from the hot slopes below to the sharp coolness of the night.

No, the heat was not overwhelming. Yet Eleanor grew paler and feebler. Lucy hovered round her in a constantly increasing anxiety. And presently she began to urge retreat, and change of plan. It was madness to stay in the south. Why not more at once to Switzerland, or the Tyrol?

Eleanor shook her head.

'But I can't have you stay here,' cried Lucy in distress.

And coming closer, she chose her favourite seat on the floor of the loggia and laid her head against Eleanor's arm.

'Oughtn't you to go home?' she said, in a low urgent voice, caressing Eleanor's hand. 'Send me back to Uncle Ben. I can go home any time. But you ought to be in Scotland. Let me write to Miss Manisty!'

Eleanor laid her hand on her mouth. 'You promised!' she said, with her sweet stubborn smile.

'But it isn't right that I should let you run these risks. It—it—isn't kind to me.'

'I don't run risks. I am as well here as anywhere. The Orvieto doctor saw no objection to my being here—for a month, at any rate.'

'Send me home,' murmured Lucy again, softly kissing the hand she held. 'I don't know why I ever came.'

Eleanor started. Her lips grew pinched and bitter. But she only said:

'Give me our six weeks. All I want is you—and quiet.'

She held out both her hands very piteously, and Lucy took them, conquered, though not convinced.

'If anything went really wrong,' said Eleanor, 'I am sure you could appeal to that old Contessa. She has the face of a mother in Israel.'

'The people here seem to be pretty much in her hand,' said Lucy, as she rose. 'She manages most of their affairs for them. But poor, poor thing!—did you see that account in the Tribuna this morning?'

The girl's voice dropped, as though it had touched a subject almost too horrible to be spoken of.

Eleanor looked up with a sign of shuddering assent. Her daily Tribuna, which the postman brought her, had in fact contained that morning a letter describing the burial—after three months!—of the remains of the army slain in the carnage of Adowa on March 1. For three months had those thousands of Italian dead lain a prey to the African sun and the African vultures, before Italy could get leave from her victorious foe to pay the last offices to her sons.

That fine young fellow of whom the neighbourhood talked, who seemed to have left behind him such memories of energy and goodness, his mother's idol, had his bones too lain bleaching on that field of horror? It did not bear thinking of.

Lucy went downstairs to attend to some household matters. It was about ten o'clock in the morning, and presently Eleanor heard the postman from Selvapendente knock at the outer door. Marie brought up the letters.

There were four or five for Lucy, who had never concealed her address from her uncle, though she had asked that it might be kept for a while from other people. He had accordingly forwarded some home-letters, and Marie laid them on the table. Beside them were some letters that Lucy had just written and addressed. The postman went his round through the village; then returned to pick them up.

Marie went away, and suddenly Eleanor sprang from the sofa. With a flush and a wild look she went to examine Lucy's letters.

Was all quite safe? Was Lucy not tampering with her, betraying her in any way? The letters were all for America, except one, addressed to Paris. No doubt an order to a tradesman? But Lucy had said nothing about it—and the letter filled Eleanor with a mad suspicion that her weakness could hardly repress.

'Why! by now—I am not even a lady!' she said to herself at last with set teeth, as she dragged herself from the table, and began to pace the loggia.

But when Lucy returned, in one way or another Eleanor managed to inform herself as to the destination of all the letters. And then she scourged and humbled herself for her doubts, and became for the rest of the morning the most winning and tender of companions.

As a rule they never spoke of Manisty. What Lucy's attitude implied was that she had in some unwitting and unwilling way brought trouble on Eleanor; that she was at Torre Amiata to repair it; and that in general she was at Eleanor's orders.

Of herself she would not allow a word. Beyond and beneath her sweetness Eleanor divined a just and indomitable pride. And beyond that Mrs. Burgoyne could not penetrate.