Meanwhile Eleanor found some distraction in Father Benecke.

The poor priest was gradually recovering a certain measure of serenity. The two ladies were undoubtedly of great assistance to him. They became popular in the village, where they and their wants set flowing a stream of lire, more abundant by far than had hitherto attended the summer guests, even the Sindaco of Selvapendente. They were the innocent causes, indeed, of some evil. Eleanor had been ordered goats' milk by the Orvieto doctor, and the gentleman who had secured the order from the massaja went in fear of his life at the hands of two other gentlemen who had not been equally happy. But in general they brought prosperity, and the popular smile was granted them.

So that when it was discovered that they were already acquainted with the mysterious foreign priest, and stoutly disposed to befriend him, the village showed the paralysing effect of a conflict of interests. At the moment and for various reasons the clericals were masters. And the clericals denounced Father Benecke as a traitor and a heretic. At the same time the village could not openly assail the ladies' friend without running the risk of driving the ladies themselves from Torre Amiata. And this clearly would have been a mere wanton slight to a kind Providence. Even the children understood the situation, and Father Benecke now took his walks unmolested by anything sharper than sour looks and averted faces.

Meanwhile he was busy in revising a new edition of his book. This review of his own position calmed him. Contact with all the mass of honest and laborious knowledge of which it was a summary gave him back his dignity, raised him from the pit of humiliation into which he seemed to have fallen, and strengthened him to resist. The spiritual privations that his state brought him could be sometimes forgotten. There were moments indeed when the iron entered into his soul. When the bell of the little church rang at half-past five in the morning, he was always there in his corner by the door. The peasants brushed past him suspiciously as they went in and out. He did not see them. He was absorbed in the function, or else in a bitter envy of the officiating priest, and at such moments he suffered all that any 'Vaticanist' could have wished him to suffer.

But when he was once more among his books, large gusts of a new and strange freedom began, as it were, to blow about him. In writing the philosophical book which had now brought him into conflict with the Church, he had written in constraint and timidity. A perpetual dread, not only of ecclesiastical censure but of the opinion of old and valued friends; a perpetual uncertainty as to the limits of Catholic liberty; these things had held him in bondage. What ought he say? What must he leave unsaid? He understood perfectly that hypothesis must not be stated as truth. But the vast accumulation of biological fact on the one hand, and of historical criticism on the other, that has become the common property of the scientific mind, how was it to be recapitulated—within Catholic limits? He wrote in fear, like one walking on the burning ploughshares of the ordeal. Religion was his life; but he had at once the keen intelligence and the mystical temperament of the Suabian. He dreaded the collision which ultimately came. Yet the mental process could not be stayed.

Now, with the final act of defiance, obscurely carried out, conditioned he knew not how, there had arrived for him a marvellous liberation of soul. Even at sixty-five he felt himself tragically new-born—naked and feeble indeed, but still with unknown possibilities of growth and new life before him.

His book, instead of being revised, must be re-written. No need now to tremble for a phrase! Let the truth be told. He plunged into his old studies again, and the world of thought met him with a friendlier and franker welcome. On all sides there was a rush and sparkle of new light. How far he must follow and submit, his trembling soul did not yet know. But for the moment there was an extraordinary though painful exhilaration—the excitement of leading-strings withdrawn and walls thrown down.

This enfranchisement brought him, however, into strange conflict with his own character. His temperament was that of the ascetic and visionary religious. His intelligence had much the same acuteness and pliancy as that of another and more pronounced doubter—a South German also, like Father Benecke,—the author of the 'Leben Jesu.' But his character was the joint product of his temperament and his habits, and was often difficult to reconcile with the quick play of his intelligence.

For instance, he was, in daily habit, an austere and most devout priest, living alone with his old sister, as silent and yet fervent as himself, and knowing almost nothing of other women, except through the Confessional. To his own astonishment he was in great request as a director. But socially he knew very little of his penitents; they were to him only 'souls,' spiritual cases which he studied with the ardour of a doctor. Otherwise the small benefice which he held in a South German town, his university class, and the travail of his own research absorbed him wholly.

Hence a great innocence and unworldliness; but also an underlying sternness towards himself and others. His wants were small, and for many years the desires of the senses had been dead within him. Towards women he felt, if the truth were known, with that strange unconscious arrogance which is a most real and very primitive element in Catholicism, notwithstanding the worship of Mary and the glories of St. Teresa and St. Catharine. The Church does not allow any woman, even a 'religious,' to wash the corporal and other linen which has been used in the Mass. There is a strain of thought implied in that prohibition which goes deep and far—back to the dim dawn of human things. It influences the priest in a hundred ways; it affected even the tender and spiritual mind of Father Benecke. As a director of women he showed them all that impersonal sweetness which is of the essence of Catholic tradition; but they often shrank nevertheless from what they felt to be a fundamental inflexibility mingled with pity.

Thus when he found himself brought into forced contact with the two ladies who had invaded his retreat, when Lucy in a hundred pretty ways began to show him a young and filial homage, when Eleanor would ask him to coffee with them, and talk to him about his book and the subjects it discussed, the old priest was both amazed and embarrassed.

How in the world did she know anything about such things? He understood that she had been of assistance to Mr. Manisty: but that it had been the assistance of a comrade and an equal—that had never entered his head.

So that at first Mrs. Burgoyne's talk silenced and repelled him. He was conscious of the male revolt of St. Paul!—'I suffer not a woman to teach'; and for a time he hung back.

On his visit to the villa, and on her first meeting with him at Torre Amiata, he had been under the influence of a shock which had crushed the child in him and broken down his reserve. Yet that reserve was naturally strong, together with certain despotic instincts which Eleanor perceived with surprise beneath his exquisite gentleness. She sometimes despaired of taming him.

Nevertheless when Eleanor presently advised him to publish a statement of his case in a German periodical; when the few quick things she said showed a knowledge of the German situation and German current literature that filled him with astonishment; when with a few smiles, hints, demurs, she made plain to him that she perfectly understood where he had weakened his book—which lay beside her—out of deference to authority, and where it must be amended, if it was to produce any real influence upon European cultivated opinion, the old priest was at first awkward or speechless. Then slowly he rose to the bait. He began to talk; he became by degrees combative, critical, argumentative. His intelligence took the field; his character receded. Eleanor had won the day.

Presently, indeed, he began to haunt them. He brought to Eleanor each article and letter as it arrived, consulting her on every phase of a controversy, concerning him and his book, which was now sweeping through certain Catholic circles and newspapers. He was eager, forgetful, exacting even. Lucy began to dread the fatigue that he sometimes produced. While for Lucy he was still the courteous and paternal priest, for Eleanor he gradually became—like Manisty—the intellectual comrade, crossing swords often in an equal contest, where he sometimes forgot the consideration due to the woman in the provocation shown him by the critic.

And when she had tamed him, it was to Eleanor all ashes and emptiness!

'This is the kind of thing I can always do,' she said to herself one day, throwing out her hands in self-scorn, as he left her on the loggia, where he had been taking coffee with herself and Lucy.

And meanwhile what attracted her was not in the least the controversialist and the man of letters—it was the priest, the Christian, the ascetic.

Torn with passion and dread as she was, she divined in him the director; she felt towards him as the woman so often feels towards that sexless mystery, the priest. Other men are the potential lovers of herself or other women; she knows herself their match. But in this man set apart, she recognises the embodied conscience, the moral judge, who is indifferent to her as a woman, observant of her as a soul. Round this attraction she flutters, and has always fluttered since the beginning of things. It is partly a yearning for guidance and submission; partly also a secret pride that she who for other men is mere woman, is, for the priest, spirit, and immortal. She prostrates herself; but at the same time she seems to herself to enter through her submission upon a region of spiritual independence where she is the slave, not of man but of God.

What she felt also, tortured as she was by jealousy and angry will, was the sheer longing for human help that must always be felt by the lonely and the weak. Confession, judgment, direction—it was on these tremendous things that her inner mind was brooding all the time that she sat talking to Father Benecke of the Jewish influence in Bavaria, or the last number of the 'CiviltÀ Cattolica.'

* * * * *

One evening at the beginning of July Eleanor and Lucy were caught in the woods by a thunder-shower. The temperature dropped suddenly, and as they mounted the hill towards the convent Eleanor in her thin white dress met a blast of cold wind that followed the rain.

The result was chill and fever. Lucy and Marie tended her as best they could, but her strength appeared to fail her with great rapidity, and there came an evening when Lucy fell into a panic of anxiety.

Should she summon the local doctor—a man who was paid 80_l._ a year by the
Municipio of Selvapendente, and tended the Commune of Torre Amiata?

She had discovered, however, that he was not liked by the peasants. His appearance was not attractive, and she doubted whether she could persuade Eleanor to see him.

An idea struck her. Without consulting Mrs. Burgoyne, she took her hat and boldly walked up to the Palazzo on the hill. Here she inquired for the Contessa Guerrini. The Contessa, however, was out; Lucy left a little note in French asking for advice. Could they get a good doctor at Selvapendente, or must she send to Orvieto?

She had hardly reached home before an answer followed her from the Contessa, who regretted extremely that Mademoiselle Foster should not have found her at home. There was a good doctor at Selvapendente, and the Contessa would have great pleasure in sending a mounted messenger to fetch him. She regretted the illness of Madame. There was a fair farmacia in the village. Otherwise she was afraid that in illness the ladies would not find themselves very well placed at Torre Amiata. Would Mademoiselle kindly have her directions for the doctor ready, and the messenger would call immediately?

Lucy was sincerely grateful and perhaps a little astonished. She was obliged to tell Eleanor, and Eleanor showed some restlessness, but was too unwell to protest. The doctor came and proved to be competent. The fever was subdued, and Eleanor was soon convalescent. Meanwhile flowers, fruit, and delicacies were sent daily from the Palazzo, and twice did the Contessa descend from her little victoria at the door of the convent courtyard, to inquire for the patient.

On each occasion Lucy saw her, and received the impression of a dignified, kind, and masterful woman, bowed by recent grief, but nevertheless sensitively alive in a sort of old-fashioned stately way to the claims of strangers on the protection of the local grandee. It seemed to attract her that Lucy was American, and that Eleanor was English.

'I have twice visited England,' she said, in an English that was correct, but a little rusty. 'My husband learnt many things from England—for the estate. But I wonder, Mademoiselle, that you come to us at this time of year?'

Lucy laughed and coloured. She said it was pleasant to see Italy without the forestieri; that it was like surprising a bird on its nest. But she stumbled a little, and the Contessa noticed both the blush and the stumbling.

When Eleanor was able to go out, the little carriage was sent for her, and neither she nor Lucy knew how to refuse it. They drove up and down the miles of zig-zag road that Don Emilio had made through the forest on either side of the river, connecting the Palazzo Guerrini with the casa di caccia on the mountain opposite. The roads were deserted; grass was beginning to grow on them. The peasants scarcely ever used them. They clung to the old steep paths and tracts that had been theirs for generations. But the small smart horses, in their jingling harness, trotted briskly along; and Eleanor beside her companion, more frail and languid than ever, looked listlessly out upon a world of beauty that spoke to her no more.

And at last a note from the Contessa arrived, asking if the ladies would honour her and her daughter by taking tea with them at the Palazzo. 'We are in deep mourning and receiving no society,' said the note; 'but if Madame and her friend will visit us in this quiet way it will give us pleasure, and they will perhaps enjoy the high view from here over our beautiful country.'

Eleanor winced and accepted.

* * * * *

The Palazzo, as they climbed up through the village towards it, showed itself to be an imposing pile of the later seventeenth century, with heavily-barred lower windows, and, above, a series of graceful loggie on its northern and western fronts which gave it a delicate and habitable air. On the north-eastern side the woods, broken by the stone-fall of the Sassetto, sank sharply to the river; on the other the village and the vineyards pressed upon its very doors. The great entrance gateway opened on a squalid village street, alive with crawling babies and chatting mothers.

At this gateway, however—through which appeared a courtyard aglow with oleanders and murmurous with running water—they were received with some state. An old majordomo met them, accompanied by two footmen and a carrying-chair. Eleanor was borne up a high flight of stone stairs, and through a vast and bare 'apartment' of enormous rooms with tiled or brick floors and wide stone cheminÉes, furnished with a few old chests and cabinets, a collection of French engravings of the last century, and some indifferent pictures. A few of the rooms were frescoed with scenes of hunting or social life in a facile eighteenth-century style. Here and there was a piece of old tapestry or a Persian carpet. But as a whole, the Palazzo, in spite of its vastness, made very much the impression of an old English manor house which has belonged to people of some taste and no great wealth, and has grown threadbare and even ugly with age. Yet tradition and the family remain. So here. A frugal and antique dignity, sure of itself and needing no display, breathed in the great cool spaces.

The Contessa and her daughter were in a small and more modern salone looking on the river and the woods. Eleanor was placed in a low chair near the open window, and her hostess could not forbear a few curious and pitying glances at the sharp, high-bred face of the Englishwoman, the feverish lips, and the very evident emaciation, which the elegance of the loose black dress tried in vain to hide.

'I understand, Madame,' she said, after Eleanor had expressed her thanks with the pretty effusion that was natural to her, 'that you were at Torre Amiata last autumn?'

Eleanor started. The massaja, she supposed, had been gossiping. It was disagreeable, but good-breeding bade her be frank.

'Yes, I was here with some friends, and your agent gave us hospitality for the night.'

The Contessa looked astonished.

'Ah!' she said, 'you were here with the D——'s?'

Eleanor assented.

'And you spent the winter in Rome?'

'Part of it. Madame, you have the most glorious view in the world!' And she turned towards the great prospect at her feet.

The Contessa understood.

'How ill she is!' she thought; 'and how distinguished!'

And presently Eleanor on her side, while she was talking nervously and fast on a good many disconnected subjects, found herself observing her hostess. The Contessa's strong square face had been pale and grief-stricken when she saw it first. But she noticed now that the eyelids were swollen and red, as though from constant tears; and the little sallow daughter looked sadder and shyer than ever. Eleanor presently gathered that they were living in the strictest seclusion and saw no visitors. 'Then why'—she asked herself, wondering—'did she speak to us in the Sassetto?—and why are we admitted now? Ah! that is his portrait!'

For at the Contessa's elbow, on a table specially given up to it, she perceived a large framed photograph draped in black. It represented a tall young man in an Artillery uniform. The face was handsome, eager, and yet melancholy. It seemed to express a character at once impatient and despondent, but held in check by a strong will. With a shiver Eleanor again recalled the ghastly incidents of the war; and the story they had heard from the massaja of the young man's wound and despair.

Her heart, in its natural lovingness, went out to his mother. She found her tongue, and she and the Contessa talked till the twilight fell of the country and the peasants, of the improvements in Italian farming, of the old convent and its history.

Not a word of the war; and not a word, Eleanor noticed, of their fellow-lodger, Father Benecke. From various indications she gathered that the sallow daughter was dÉvote and a 'black.' The mother, however, seemed to be of a different stamp. She was at any rate a person of cultivation. That, the books lying about were enough to prove. But she had also the shrewdness and sobriety, the large pleasant homeliness, of a good man of business. It was evident that she, rather than her fattore, managed her property, and that she perfectly understood what she was doing.

In truth, a secret and strong sympathy had arisen between the two women.
During the days that followed they met often.

The Contessa asked no further questions as to the past history or future plans of the visitors. But indirectly, and without betraying her new friends, she made inquiries in Rome. One of the D—— family wrote to her:

'The English people we brought with us last year to your delicious Torre Amiata were three—a gentleman and two ladies. The gentleman was a Mr. Manisty, a former member of the English Parliament, and very conspicuous in Rome last winter for a kind of BrunetiÈre alliance with the Vatican and hostility to the Italian rÉgime. People mostly regarded it as a pose; and as he and his aunt were rich and of old family, and Mr. Manisty was—when he chose—a most brilliant talker, they were welcome everywhere, and Rome certainly fÊted them a good deal. The lady staying with them was a Mrs. Burgoyne, a very graceful and charming woman whom everybody liked. It was quite plain that there was some close relation between her and Mr. Manisty. By which I mean nothing scandalous! Heavens! nobody ever thought of such a thing. But I believe that many people who knew them well felt that it would be a very natural and right thing that he should marry her. She was evidently touchingly devoted to him—acting as his secretary, and hanging on his talk. In the spring they went out to the hills, and a young American girl—quite a beauty, they say, though rather raw—went to stay with them. I heard so much of her beauty from Madame Variani that I was anxious to see her. Miss Manisty promised to bring her here before they left in June. But apparently the party broke up suddenly, and we saw no more of them.

'Now I think I have told you the chief facts about them. I wonder what makes you ask? I often think of poor Mrs. Burgoyne, and hope she may be happy some day. I can't say, however, that Mr. Manisty ever seemed to me a very desirable husband! And yet I was very sorry you were not at home in the autumn. You might have disliked him heartily, but you would have found him piquant and stimulating. And of all the glorious heads on man's shoulders he possesses the most glorious—the head of a god attached to a rather awkward and clumsy body.'

Happy! Well, whatever else might have happened, the English lady was not yet happy. Of that the Contessa Guerrini was tolerably certain after a first conversation with her. Amid the gnawing pressure of her own grief there was a certain distraction in the observance of this sad and delicate creature, and in the very natural speculations she aroused. Clearly Miss Foster was the young American girl. Why were they here together, in this heat, away from all their friends?

* * * * *

One day Eleanor was sitting with the Contessa on a loggia in the Palazzo, looking north-west towards Radicofani. It was a cool and rather cloudy evening, after a day of gasping heat. The majordomo suddenly announced; 'His reverence, Don Teodoro.'

The young padre parroco appeared—a slim, engaging figure, as he stood for an instant amid the curtains of the doorway, glancing at the two ladies with an expression at once shy and confiding.

He received the Contessa's greeting with effusion, bowing low over her hand. When she introduced him to the English lady, he bowed again ceremoniously. But his blue eyes lost their smile. The gesture was formal, the look constrained. Eleanor, remembering Father Benecke, understood.

In conversation with the Contessa however he recovered a boyish charm and spontaneity that seemed to be characteristic. Eleanor watched him with admiration, noticing also the subtle discernment of the Italian, which showed through all his simplicity of manner. It was impossible to mistake, for instance, that he felt himself in a house of mourning. The movements of body and voice were all at first subdued and sympathetic. Yet the mourning had passed into a second stage, and ordinary topics might now be introduced. He glided into them with the most perfect tact.

He had come for two reasons. First, to announce his appointment as Select Preacher for the coming Advent at a well-known church in Rome; secondly, to bring to the Contessa's notice a local poet—gifted, but needy—an Orvieto man, whose Muse the clergy had their own reasons for cultivating.

The Contessa congratulated him, and he bowed profoundly in a silent pleasure.

Then he took up the poet, repeating stanza after stanza with a perfect naÏvetÉ, in his rich young voice, without a trace of display; ending at last with a little sigh, and a sudden dropping of the eyes, like a child craving pardon.

Eleanor was delighted with him, and the Contessa, who seemed more difficult to please, also smiled upon him. Teresa, the pious daughter, was with Lucy in the Sassetto. No doubt she was the little priest's particular friend. He had observed at once that she was not there, and had inquired for her.

'One or two of those lines remind me of Carducci, and that reminds me that I saw Carducci for the first time this spring,' said the Contessa, turning to Eleanor. 'It was at a meeting of the Accademia in Rome. A great affair—the King and Queen—and a paper on Science and Religion, by Mazzoli. Perhaps you don't remember his name? He was our Minister of the Interior a few years ago.'

Eleanor did not hear. Her attention was diverted by the sudden change in the aspect of the padre parroco. It was the dove turned hawk. The fresh face seemed to have lost its youth in a moment, to have grown old, sharp, rancorous.

'Mazzoli!'—he said, as the Contessa paused—'Eccellenza, È un Ebreo!'

The Contessa frowned. Yes, Mazzoli was a Jew, but an honest man; and his address had been of great interest, as bearing witness to the revival of religious ideas in circles that had once been wholly outside religion. The parroco's lips quivered with scorn. He remembered the affair—a scandalous business! The King and Queen present, and a Jew daring before them, to plead the need of 'a new religion'—in Italy, where Catholicism, Apostolic and Roman, was guaranteed as the national religion—by the first article of the Statuto. The Contessa replied with some dryness that Mazzoli spoke as a philosopher. Whereupon the parroco insisted with heat that there could be no true philosophy outside the Church. The Contessa laughed and turned upon the young man a flashing and formidable eye.

'Let the Church add a little patriotism to her philosophy, Father,—she will find it better appreciated.'

Don Teodoro straightened to the blow. 'I am a Roman, Eccellenza—you also—Scusi!'

'I am an Italian, Father—you also. But you hate your country.'

Both speakers had grown a little pale.

'I have nothing to do with the Italy of Venti Settembre,' said the priest, twisting and untwisting his long fingers in a nervous passion. 'That Italy has three marks of distinction before Europe—by which you may know her.'

'And those—?' said the Contessa, calm and challenging.

'Debt, Eccellenza—hunger!—crimes of blood! Sono il suo primato—l'unico!'

He threw at her a look sparkling and venomous. All the grace of his youth had vanished. As he sat there, Eleanor in a flash saw in him the conspirator and the firebrand that a few more years would make of him.

'Ah!' said the Contessa, flushing. 'There were none of these things in the old Papal States?—under the Bourbons?—the Austrians? Well—we understand perfectly that you would destroy us if you could!'

'Eccellenza, Jesus Christ and his Vicar come before the House of Savoy!'

'Ruin us, and see what you will gain!'

'Eccellenza, the Lord rules.

'Well—well. Break the eggs—that's easy. But whether the omelet will be as the Jesuits please—that's another affair.'

Each combatant smiled, and drew a long breath.

'These are our old battles,' said the Contessa, shaking her head. 'Scusi!
I must go and give an order.'

And to Eleanor's alarm, she rose and left the room.

The young priest showed a momentary embarrassment at being left alone with the strange lady. But it soon passed. He sat a moment, quieting down, with his eyes dropped, his finger-tips lightly joined upon his knee. Then he said sweetly:

'You are perhaps not acquainted with the pictures in the Palazzo, Madame. May I offer you my services? I believe that I know the names of the portraits.'

Eleanor was grateful to him, and they wandered through the bare rooms, looking at the very doubtful works of art that they contained.

Presently, as they returned to the salone from which they had started,
Eleanor caught sight of a fine old copy of the Raphael St. Cecilia at
Bologna. The original has been much injured, and the excellence of the copy
struck her. She was seized, too, with a stabbing memory of a day in the
Bologna Gallery with Manisty!

She hurried across the room to look at the picture. The priest followed her.

'Ah! that, Madame,' he said with enthusiasm—that is a capolavoro. It is by Michael Angelo.'

Eleanor looked at him in astonishment. 'This one? It is a copy, Padre, of
Raphael's St. Cecilia at Bologna—a very interesting and early copy.'

Don Teodoro frowned. He went up to look at it doubtfully, pushing out his lower lip.

'Oh! no, Madame,' he said, returning to her, and speaking with a soft yet obstinate complacency. 'Pardon me—but you are mistaken. That is an original work of the great Michael Angelo.'

Eleanor said no more.

When the Contessa returned, Eleanor took up a volume of French translations from the Greek Anthology that the Contessa had lent her the day before. She restored the dainty little book to its mistress, pointing to some of her favourites.

The parroco's face fell as he listened.

'Ah!—these are from the Greek!' he said, looking down modestly, as the Contessa handed him the book. 'I spent five years, Eccellenza, in learning Greek, but—!' He shrugged his shoulders gently.

Then glancing from one lady to the other, he said with a deprecating smile:

'I could tell you some things. I could explain what some of the Greek words in Italian come from—"mathematics," for instance.'

He gave the Greek word with a proud humility, emphasising each syllable.

'"Economy"—"theocracy"—"aristocracy."'

The Greek came out like a child's lesson. He was not always sure; he corrected himself once or twice; and at the end he threw back his head with a little natural pride.

But the ladies avoided looking either at him or each other.

Eleanor thought of Father Benecke; of the weight of learning on that silver head. Yet Benecke was an outcast, and this youth was already on the ladder of promotion.

When he departed the Contessa threw up her hands.

'And that man is just appointed Advent Preacher at one of the greatest churches in Rome!'

Then she checked herself.

'At the same time, Madame,' she said, looking a little stiffly at Eleanor, 'we have learned priests—many of them.'

Eleanor hastened to assent. With what heat had Manisty schooled her during the winter to the recognition of Catholic learning, within its own self-chosen limits!

'It is this deplorable Seminary education!' sighed the Contessa. 'How is one half of the nation ever to understand the other? They speak a different language. Imagine all our scientific education on the one side, and this—this dangerous innocent on the other! And yet we all want religion—we all want some hope beyond this life.'

Her strong voice broke. She turned away, and Eleanor could only see the massive outline of head and bust, and the coils of grey hair.

Mrs. Burgoyne drew her chair nearer to the Contessa. Silently and timidly she laid a hand upon her knee.

'I can't understand,' she said in a low voice, 'how you have had the patience to be kind to us, these last weeks!'

'Do you know why?' said the Contessa, turning round upon her, and no longer attempting to conceal the tears upon her fine old face.

'No—tell me!'

'It was because Emilio loved the English. He once spent a very happy summer in England. I—I don't know whether he was in love with anyone. But, at any rate, he looked back to it with deep feeling. He always did everything that he could for any English person—and especially in these wilds. I have known him often take trouble that seemed to me extravagant or quixotic. But he always would. And when I saw you in the Sassetto that day, I knew exactly what he would have done. You looked so delicate—and I remembered how rough the convent was. I had hardly spoken to anybody but Teresa since the news came, but I could not help speaking to you.'

Eleanor pressed her hand. After a pause she said gently:

'He was with General Da Bormida?'

'Yes—he was with Da Bormida. There were three columns, you remember. He was with the column that seemed for a time to be successful. I only got the full account last week from a brother-officer, who was a prisoner till the end of June. Emilio, like all the rest, thought the position was carried—that it was a victory. He raised his helmet and shouted, Viva il Re! Viva l'Italia! And then all in a moment the Scioans were on them like a flood. They were all carried away. Emilio rallied his men again and again under a hail of bullets. Several heard him say: "Courage, lads—courage! Your Captain dies with you! Avanti! avanti! Viva l'Italia!" Then at last he was frightfully wounded, and perhaps you may have heard in the village'—again the mother turned her face away—' that he said to a caporale beside him, who came from this district, whom he knew at home—"Federigo, take your gun and finish it." He was afraid—my beloved!—of falling into the hands of the enemy. Already they had passed some wounded, horribly mutilated. The caporale refused. "I can't do that, Eccellenza," he said; "but we will transport you or die with you!" Then again there was a gleam of victory. He thought the enemy were repulsed. A brother-officer saw him being carried along by two soldiers, and Emilio beckoned to him. "You must be my Confessor!" he said, smiling. And he gave him some messages for me and Teresa—some directions about his affairs. Then he asked: "It is victory—isn't it? We have won, after all?" And the other—who knew—couldn't bear to tell him the truth. He said, "Yes." And Emilio said, "You swear it?" "I swear." And the boy made the sign of the cross—said again, Viva l'Italia!—and died…. They buried him that night under a little thicket. My God! I thank Thee that he did not lie on that accursed plain!'

She raised her handkerchief to hide her trembling lips. Eleanor said nothing. Her face was bowed upon her hands, which lay on the Contessa's knee.

'His was not a very happy temperament,' said the poor mother presently.' He was always anxious and scrupulous. I sometimes thought he had been too much influenced by Leopardi; he was always quoting him. That is the way with many of our young men. Yet Emilio was a Christian—a sincere believer. It would have been better if he had married. But he gave all his affection to me and Teresa—and to this place and the people. I was to carry on his work—but I am an old woman—and very tired. Why should the young go before their time?… Yet I have no bitterness about the war. It was a ghastly mistake—and it has humiliated us as a nation. But nations are made by their blunderings as much as by their successes. Emilio would not have grudged his life. He always thought that Italy had been "made too quick," as they say—that our day of trial and weakness was not done…. But, GesÙ mio!—if he had not left me so much of life.'

Eleanor raised her head.

'I, too,' she said, almost in a whisper—'I, too, have lost a son. But he was a little fellow.'

The Contessa looked at her in astonishment and burst into tears.

'Then we are two miserable women!' she said, wildly.

Eleanor clung to her—but with a sharp sense of unfitness and unworthiness. She felt herself a hypocrite. In thought and imagination her boy now was but a hovering shadow compared to Manisty. It was not this sacred mother-love that was destroying her own life.

* * * * *

As they drove home through the evening freshness, Eleanor's mind pursued its endless and solitary struggle.

Lucy sat beside her. Every now and then Eleanor's furtive guilty look sought the girl's face. Sometimes a flying terror would grip her by the heart. Was Lucy graver—paler? Were there some new lines round the sweet eyes? That serene and virgin beauty—had it suffered the first withering touch since Eleanor had known it first? And if so, whose hand? whose fault?

Once or twice her heart failed within her; foreseeing a remorse that was no sooner imagined than it was denied, scouted, hurried out of sight.

That brave, large-brained woman with whom she had just been talking; there was something in the atmosphere which the Contessa's personality shed round it, that made Eleanor doubly conscious of the fever in her own blood. As in Father Benecke's case, so here; she could only feel herself humiliated and dumb before these highest griefs—the griefs that ennoble and enthrone.

That night she woke from a troubled sleep with a stifled cry of horror. In her dreams she had been wrestling with Manisty, trying to thrust him back with all the frenzied force of her weak hands. But he had wrenched himself from her hold. She saw him striding past her—aglow, triumphant. And that dim white form awaiting him—and the young arms outstretched!

'No, no! False! She doesn't—doesn't love him!' her heart cried, throwing all its fiercest life into the cry. She sat up in bed trembling and haggard. Then she stole into the next room. Lucy lay deeply, peacefully asleep. Eleanor sank down beside her, hungrily watching her. 'How could she sleep like that—if—if she cared?' asked her wild thoughts, and she comforted herself, smiling at her own remorse. Once she touched the girl's hand with her lips, feeling towards her a rush of tenderness that came like dew on the heat of the soul. Then she crept back to bed, and cried, and cried—through the golden mounting of the dawn.