ntent that others should be
so, for discomfort's sake. It fretted her that the Sunday in Naples
could not be as universally dolorous as it was at Bartles. It revolted
her to hear happy voices in a country abandoned to heathendom.

"Whenever I see her looking at old Vesuvius," said Spence to Eleanor,
his eye twinkling, "I feel sure that she muses on the possibility of
another tremendous outbreak. She regards him in a friendly way; he is
the minister of vengeance."

Eleanor's discernment was not long in bringing her to a modification of
this estimate.

"I am convinced, Ned, that her thoughts are not so constantly at
Bartles as we imagine. In any case, I begin to understand what she
suffers from most. It is want of occupation for her mind. She is
crushed with _ennui_."

"This is irreverence. As well attribute _ennui_ to the Prophet Jeremiah
meditating woes to come."

"I allow you your joke, but I am right for all that. She has nothing to
think about that profoundly interests her; her books are all but as
sapless to her as to you or me. She is sinking into melancholia."

"But, my dear girl, the chapel!"

"She only pretends to think of it. Miriam is becoming a hypocrite I
have noted several little signs of it since Cecily came. She poses--and
in wretchedness. Please to recollect that her age is four-and-twenty."

"I do so frequently, and marvel at human nature."

"I do so, and without marvelling at all, for I see human nature
justifying itself. I'll tell you what I am going to do, I shall propose
to her to begin and read Dante."

"The 'Inferno.' Why, yes."

"And I shall craftily introduce to her attention one or two wicked and
worldly little books, such as, 'The Improvisatore,' and the 'Golden
Treasury,' and so on. Any such attempts at first would have been
premature; but I think the time has come."

Miriam knew no language but her own, and Eleanor by no means purposed
inviting her to a course of grammar and exercise. She herself, with her
husband's assistance, had learned to read Italian in the only rational
way for mature-minded persons--simply taking the text and a close
translation, and glancing from time to time at a skeleton accidence.
This, of course, will not do in the case of fools, but Miriam Baske,
all appearances notwithstanding, did not belong to that category. On
hearing her cousin's proposition, she at first smiled coldly; but she
did not reject it, and in a day or two they had made a fair begin