rdinal looked startled.

Then his eyes searched Peter's face for a second, keenly interrogative.
Then they softened; and a wonderful clear light shone in them, a
wonderful pure, sweet light.

"Benedicat te Omnipotens Deus, Pater, et Filius, et Spiritus Sanctus,"
he said, making the Sign of the Cross.

XXVII

Up at the castle, Cardinal Udeschini was walking backwards and forwards
on the terrace, reading his Breviary.

Beatrice was seated under the white awning, at the terrace-end, doing
some kind of needlework.

Presently the Cardinal came to a standstill near her, and closed his
book, putting his finger in it, to keep the place.

"It will be, of course, a great loss to Casa Udeschini, when you marry,"
he remarked.

Beatrice looked up, astonishment on her brow.

"When I marry?" she exclaimed. "Well, if ever there was a thunderbolt
from a clear sky!"

And she laughed.

"Yes-when you marry," the Cardinal repeated, with conviction. "You are a
young woman--you are twenty-eight years old. You will, marry. It is only
right that you should marry. You have not the vocation for a religious.
Therefore you must marry. But it will be a great loss to the house of
Udeschini."

"Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof," said Beatrice, laughing
again. "I haven't the remotest thought of marrying. I shall never
marry."

"Il ne faut jamais dire a la fontaine, je ne boirai pas de ton eau,"
his Eminence cautioned her, whilst the lines of humour about his mouth
emphasised themselves, and his grey eyes twinkled. "Other things equal,
marriage is as much the proper state for the laity, as celibacy is the
proper state for the clergy. You will marry. It would be selfish of us
to oppose your marrying. You ought to marry. But it will be a great loss
to the family--it will be a great personal loss to me. You are as dear
to me as any of my blood. I am always forgetting that we are uncle and
niece by courtesy only."

"I shall never marry. But nothing that can happen to me can ever make
the faintest difference in my feeling for you. I hope you know how much
I love you?" She looked into his eyes, smiling her love. "You are only
my uncle by courtesy? But you are more than an uncle--you have been like
a father to me, ever since I left my convent."

The Cardinal returned her smile.

"Carissima," he murmured. Then, "It will be a matter of the utmost
importance to me, however," he went on, "that, when the time comes, you
shou