ong as he conducted with the strictest circumspection of
his office, what had he to fear in the way of so delightful a duty? He
had never touched her hand; never had even the folds of her passing
drapery brushed against his garments of mortification and renunciation;
never, even in pastoral benediction, had he dared lay his hand on that
beautiful head. It is true, he had not forbidden himself to raise his
glance sometimes when he saw her coming in at the church-door and
gliding up the aisle with downcast eyes, and thoughts evidently so far
above earth, that she seemed, like one of Fra Angelico's angels, to be
moving on a cloud, so encompassed with stillness and sanctity that he
held his breath as she passed.

But in the confession of Dame Elsie that morning he had received a shock
which threw his whole interior being into a passionate agitation which
dismayed and astonished him.

The thought of Agnes, his spotless lamb, exposed to lawless and
licentious pursuit, of whose nature and probabilities his past life
gave him only too clear an idea, was of itself a very natural source of
anxiety. But Elsie had unveiled to him her plans for her marriage, and
consulted him on the propriety of placing Agnes immediately under the
protection of the husband she had chosen for her; and it was this part
of her communication which had awakened the severest internal recoil,
and raised a tumult of passions which the priest vainly sought either to
assuage or understand.

As soon as his morning duties were over, he repaired to his convent,
sought his cell, and, prostrate on his face before the crucifix, began
his internal reckoning with himself. The day passed in fasting and
solitude.

It is now golden evening, and on the square, flat roof of the convent,
which, high-perched on a crag, overlooks the bay, one might observe a
dark figure slowly pacing backward and forward. It is Father Francesco;
and as he walks up and down, one could see by his large, bright, dilated
eye, by the vivid red spot on either sunken cheek, and by the nervous
energy of his movements, that he is in the very height of some mental
crisis,--in that state of placid _extase_ in which the subject supposes
himself perfectly calm, because every nerve is screwed to the highest
point of tension and can vibrate no more.

What oceans had that day rolled over him and swept him, as one may see a
little boat rocked on the capricious surges of the Mediterranean! Were,
then, a