the Middle Ages where
immured nuns were taking part in ceremonies for the dead, amidst smoking
lamps, and whence incense and low chanting, inseparably blended, stole
up into the bright conceptions and cheerful art of the nineteenth
century.

The singing proceeded from one woman and two boys, the elder of the
latter seven years old or a little more, and the younger about six. The
woman turned her face toward the door, and paused quite astonished at my
entrance; the boys were gazing out of the window, and did not look at
her; they were wholly absorbed in their singing, and therefore they
continued a while after she had ceased.

Of these two boys the one resembled the father's family, the other the
mother's; only the mother's eyes had been bestowed on them both. The
elder of the boys had a long face, with high brow and sandy hair, and he
was freckled like his father. The younger one had his mother's figure,
and stooped slightly because the head was set forward on the shoulders.
But in consequence of this his head was usually thrown somewhat backward
in order to recover its equilibrium. The result of this again was that
the lips were habitually parted, and then the large, questioning eyes
and the bright curly hair encircling the fine arched brow were exactly
like the mother's. The elder one was tall and thin, and had his father's
lounging gait and small, outward turned feet. I observed all this at a
glance, while the boys walked across the room to the table by the sofa,
as their companion left them. She had advanced, after a moment's
hesitation, to meet me; she was evidently not sure whether she knew me
or not. On hearing my name, she discovered with a smile that it was only
my portrait she had seen, the portrait in the album, a souvenir of the
wedding journey of the heads of the house. She informed me that Atlung
was at the factories, and would be home to dinner, that is to say in
about an hour, and that the mistress of the house was at one of the
housemen's places I had seen from the road; it seemed that there was an
old man lying at the point of death there.

She made this announcement in a melodious, although rather feeble voice,
and with a pair of searching eyes fastened on me. She had heard
something about me. I had never thought that I should see one of Carlo
Dolci's madonnas step down from a frame to stand in a modern
sitting-room and talk with me, and therefore my eyes were certainly not
less searching than hers