looked round. "I won't press
you to go back there; at all events, just now," he said in his most
caressing tone; "but you must promise me to take a thorough rest when
your vacation begins this summer. I think you had better get a holiday
right away from the neighborhood of Leghorn. I can't have you breaking
down in health."

"Where shall you go when the seminary closes, Padre?"

"I shall have to take the pupils into the hills, as usual, and see them
settled there. But by the middle of August the subdirector will be
back from his holiday. I shall try to get up into the Alps for a little
change. Will you come with me? I could take you for some long mountain
rambles, and you would like to study the Alpine mosses and lichens. But
perhaps it would be rather dull for you alone with me?"

"Padre!" Arthur clasped his hands in what Julia called his
"demonstrative foreign way." "I would give anything on earth to go away
with you. Only--I am not sure----" He stopped.

"You don't think Mr. Burton would allow it?"

"He wouldn't like it, of course, but he could hardly interfere. I
am eighteen now and can do what I choose. After all, he's only my
step-brother; I don't see that I owe him obedience. He was always unkind
to mother."

"But if he seriously objects, I think you had better not defy his
wishes; you may find your position at home made much harder if----"

"Not a bit harder!" Arthur broke in passionately. "They always did hate
me and always will--it doesn't matter what I do. Besides, how can James
seriously object to my going away with you--with my father confessor?"

"He is a Protestant, remember. However, you had better write to him, and
we will wait to hear what he thinks. But you must not be impatient, my
son; it matters just as much what you do, whether people hate you or
love you."

The rebuke was so gently given that Arthur hardly coloured under it.
"Yes, I know," he answered, sighing; "but it is so difficult----"

"I was sorry you could not come to me on Tuesday evening," Montanelli
said, abruptly introducing a new subject. "The Bishop of Arezzo was
here, and I should have liked you to meet him."

"I had promised one of the students to go to a meeting at his lodgings,
and they would have been expecting me."

"What sort of meeting?"

Arthur seemed embarrassed by the question. "It--it was n-not a r-regular
meeting," he said with a nervous little stammer. "A student had come
from Genoa, and he made a speec