fore him."

"My poor little sister," said the Princess, much perplexed, "you do not
understand things. What you speak of is impossible. The Pope is a great
king."

"I know he is," said Agnes,--"and so is our Lord Jesus,--but every soul
may come to him."

"I cannot explain to you now," said the Princess,--"there is not time
to-night. But I shall see you again. I will send for you to come to my
house, and there talk with you about many things which you need to know.
Meanwhile, promise me, dear child, not to try to do anything of the kind
you spoke of until I have talked with you."

"Well, I will not," said Agnes, with a glance of docile affection,
kissing the hand of the Princess.

The action was so pretty,--the great, soft, dark eyes looked so
fawn-like and confiding in their innocent tenderness, that the lady
seemed much moved.

"Our dear Mother bless thee, child!" she said, laying her hand on her
head, and stooping to kiss her forehead.

She left her at the door of the dormitory.

The Princess and her attendant went out of the church-door, where her
litter stood in waiting. The two took their seats in silence, and
silently pursued their way through the streets of the old dimly-lighted
city and out of one of its principal gates to the wide Campagna beyond.
The villa of the Princess was situated on an eminence at some distance
from the city, and the night-ride to it was solemn and solitary. They
passed along the old Appian Way over pavements that had rumbled under
the chariot-wheels of the emperors and nobles of a by-gone age, while
along their way, glooming up against the clear of the sky, were vast
shadowy piles,--the tombs of the dead of other days. All mouldering and
lonely, shaggy and fringed with bushes and streaming wild vines through
which the night-wind sighed and rustled, they might seem to be pervaded
by the restless spirits of the dead; and as the lady passed them, she
shivered, and, crossing herself, repeated an inward prayer against
wandering demons that walk in desolate places.

Timid and solitary, the high-born lady shrank and cowered within herself
with a distressing feeling of loneliness. A childless widow in delicate
health, whose paternal family had been for the most part cruelly robbed,
exiled, or destroyed by the reigning Pope and his family, she felt her
own situation a most unprotected and precarious one, since the least
jealousy or misunderstanding might bring upon her, too, the ill-wi