Mamma suggests a cup of tea. Meanwhile I
put on an old dress and half a dozen veils, I take Assunta under my arm,
and we start on a pedestrian tour. It 's a bore that I can't take the
poodle, but he attracts attention. We trudge about everywhere; there
is nothing I like so much. I hope you will congratulate me on the
simplicity of my tastes."

"I congratulate you on your wisdom. To live in Rome and not to walk
would, I think, be poor pleasure. But you are terribly far from home,
and I am afraid you are tired."

"A little--enough to sit here a while."

"Might I offer you my company while you rest?"

"If you will promise to amuse me. I am in dismal spirits."

Rowland said he would do what he could, and brought a chair and placed
it near her. He was not in love with her; he disapproved of her; he
mistrusted her; and yet he felt it a kind of privilege to watch her, and
he found a peculiar excitement in talking to her. The background of her
nature, as he would have called it, was large and mysterious, and it
emitted strange, fantastic gleams and flashes. Watching for these rather
quickened one's pulses. Moreover, it was not a disadvantage to talk to
a girl who made one keep guard on one's composure; it diminished one's
chronic liability to utter something less than revised wisdom.

Assunta had risen from her prayers, and, as he took his place, was
coming back to her mistress. But Christina motioned her away. "No, no;
while you are about it, say a few dozen more!" she said. "Pray for me,"
she added in English. "Pray, I say nothing silly. She has been at it
half an hour; I envy her capacity!"

"Have you never felt in any degree," Rowland asked, "the fascination of
Catholicism?"

"Yes, I have been through that, too! There was a time when I wanted
immensely to be a nun; it was not a laughing matter. It was when I was
about sixteen years old. I read the Imitation and the Life of Saint
Catherine. I fully believed in the miracles of the saints, and I was
dying to have one of my own. The least little accident that could have
been twisted into a miracle would have carried me straight into the
bosom of the church. I had the real religious passion. It has passed
away, and, as I sat here just now, I was wondering what had become of
it!"

Rowland had already been sensible of something in this young lady's tone
which he would have called a want of veracity, and this epitome of her
religious experience failed to strike him as a