high monastery walls can never understand the
delightful, old-world peace that reigns within--that big family of
whom the father is the fat Priore, always indulgent and kind to his
grown-up children, yet so very severe upon any broken rule.

Fra Pacifico had that evening told me something which had placed me
very much upon the alert. I had not been mistaken when I suspected
that he might know something of the woman Yolanda Romanelli--the woman
whom Rayne had sent me to inquire about--and I felt that I had done
well to first inquire of my old friend. He had hinted certain things
concerning the Marchesa, the gay leader of society in Rome, whose name
was in the _Tribuna_ almost daily, and whose husband possessed a fine
old palazzo in the Corso, as well as an official residence in Naples,
where, in addition to being one of the most popular men in Italy, he
was Admiral of the Port.

"May I be forgiven for uttering those ill-words," exclaimed the monk,
as though speaking to himself. "We are taught to forgive our enemies.
But I cannot forgive her!"

"Why?" I asked.

"She has desecrated the house of God," he replied in a low tense
voice.

Two hours later I was back with Lola and Madame Duperre at the Hotel
Victoria at Pisa.

Coming from the lips of any other than those of Fra Pacifico I should
have suspected that the Marchesa Romanelli had once done him some evil
turn. Yet when a man renounces the world and enters the cloisters, he
puts aside all jealousies and thought of injury, and lives a life of
devotion and of strictest piety. Fra Pacifico was a man I much
admired, and whose word I accepted without query.

Next day Lola was inquisitive as to my visit to the monastery, but I
was compelled to keep my own counsel, and that evening we all three
took the night express to Rome, arriving at the Grand at nine o'clock
after a dusty and sleepless journey, for the _wagons-lit_ which run
over the Maremma marshes roll and rock until sleep becomes quite
impossible.

With the Eternal City Lola was delighted, though it was out of the
season and the deserted streets were like furnaces. Still, I was able
to drive her out to see some of the antiquities which I had myself
visited half a dozen times before.

My notes included the name of a man named Enrico Prati, who lived
humbly in the Via d'Aranico, and one evening, two days after our
arrival, I called upon him. Lola had been anxious that I should stay
for a small dance in the