Cardinal would drive up in the brougham, and, having paid a little
visit to Marietta, would drive Emilia home.

In the sick-room Emilia would read to Marietta, or say the rosary for
her.

Marietta mended steadily day by day. At the end of a fortnight she was
able to leave her bed for an hour or two in the afternoon, and sit in
the sun in the garden. Then Sister Scholastica went back to her convent
at Venzona. At the end of the third week Marietta could be up all day.
But Gigi's stalwart Carolina Maddalena continued to rule as vicereine in
the kitchen. And Emilia continued to come every morning.

"Why does the Duchessa never come?" Peter wondered. "It would be decent
of her to come and see the poor old woman."

Whenever he thought of Cardinal Udeschini, the same strange feeling of
joy would spring up in his heart, which he had felt when he had left the
beautiful old man with Marietta, on the day of his first visit. In the
beginning he could only give this feeling a very general and indefinite
expression. "He is a man who renews one's faith in things, who renews
one's faith in human nature." But gradually, I suppose, the feeling
crystallised; and at last, in due season, it found for itself an
expression that was not so indefinite.

It was in the afternoon, and he had just conducted the Cardinal and
Emilia to their carriage. He stood at his gate for a minute, and watched
the carriage as it rolled away.

"What a heavenly old man, what a heavenly old man," he thought.

Then, still looking after the carriage, before turning back into his
garden, he heard himself repeat, half aloud

"Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbour's creed hath lent."

The words had come to his lips, and were pronounced, were addressed to
his mental image of the Cardinal, without any conscious act of volition
on his part. He heard them with a sort of surprise, almost as if some
one else had spoken them. He could not in the least remember what poem
they were from, he could not even remember what poet they were by. Were
they by Emerson? It was years since he had read a line of Emerson's.

All that evening the couplet kept running in his head. And the feeling
of joy, of enthusiasm, in his heart, was not so strange now. But I think
it was intensified.

The next time the Cardinal arrived at Villa Floriano, and gave Peter his
hand, Peter did not merely shake it, English fashion, as he had hitherto
done.

The Ca