waistband. The horses were beautiful in the sunshine, and their red
hides glistened in the long, slanting rays. She put up her parasol and
tried to understand, but she could only see the angles of houses, and
the eccentricity of every passer-by. She saw very clearly the thin,
facial line, and her eyes rested on the touch of purple at the throat to
mark his Roman dignity. Father Daly sat opposite, rubbing his thumbs
like one in the presence of a superior. He was not ill-looking, but so
shy that his features passed unperceived, and it was some time before
she saw his eyes; they were always cast down, and his thin, well-cut
nose disappeared in his freckled cheeks. The cloth he wore was coarser
than Monsignor's; his heavy shoes contrasted with the finely-stitched
and buckled shoes of the Papal prelate.

This visit to the convent frightened Evelyn more than the largest
audience that had ever assembled to hear her, and, until they got clear
of the town, she was not certain she would not plead some excuse and
tell the coachman to turn back. But now it was too late. The carriage
ascended the steep street, and, at the top of it, the town ended
abruptly at the edge of the common. On one side was a high brick wall,
hiding the grounds and gardens of the villas; on the other was the
common, seen through the leaves of a line of thin trees. In her nervous
agitation, she saw very distinctly--the foreground teeming with the
animation of cricket, the more remote parts solitary, the windmill
hovering in a corner out of the way of the sunset, and two horsemen and
a horsewoman cantering along the edge of the long valley into which the
plain dropped precipitously. The sun sank in a white sky, and Evelyn
caught the point of one of the ribs of her parasol, so that she could
hold it in a better position to shade her eyes, and she saw how the
houses stretched into a point, the last being an inn, no doubt the noisy
resort of the cricketers and the landscape painters. There was a painter
making his way towards the valley, his paint-box on his back. But at
that moment the carriage turned into a lane where a paling enclosed the
small gardens. She then noticed the decaying pear or apple tree, to
which was attached a clothes-line. Enormous sunflowers weltered in the
dusty corners. The brick was crumbling and broken, beautiful in colour,
"And in every one of these cottages someone is living; someone is
laughing; someone will soon be dead. Good heavens,