ore
ecclesiastics were always gathered in stiff seats about the hearth; and
the aspect of the apartment, and the Marchioness's semi-monastic
costume, justified the nickname of "the sacristy," which the Duchess had
bestowed on her rival's drawing-room.

Around the small fire on this cheerless hearth the fortunes of the state
were discussed and directed, benefices disposed of, court appointments
debated, and reputations made and unmade in tones that suggested the low
drone of a group of canons intoning the psalter in an empty cathedral.
The Marchioness, who appeared as eager as the others to win Odo to her
party, received him with every mark of consideration and pressed him to
accompany her on a visit to her brother, the Abbot of the Barnabites; an
invitation which he accepted with the more readiness as he had not
forgotten the part played by that religious in the adventure of
Mirandolina of Chioggia.

He found the Abbot a man with a bland intriguing eye and centuries of
pious leisure in his voice. He received his visitors in a room hung with
smoky pictures of the Spanish school, showing Saint Jerome in the
wilderness, the death of Saint Peter Martyr, and other sanguinary
passages in the lives of the saints; and Odo, seated among such
surroundings, and hearing the Abbot deplore the loose lives and
religious negligence of certain members of the court, could scarce
repress a smile as the thought of Mirandolina flitted through his mind.

"She must," he reflected, "have found this a sad change from the
Bishop's palace;" and admired with what philosophy she had passed from
one protector to the other.

Life in Pianura, after the first few weeks, seemed on the whole a tame
business to a youth of his appetite; and he secretly longed for a
pretext to resume his travels. None, however, seemed likely to offer;
for it was clear that the Duke, in the interval of more pressing
concerns, wished to study and observe his kinsman. When sufficiently
recovered from the effects of the pilgrimage, he sent for Odo and
questioned him closely as to the way in which he had spent his time
since coming to Pianura, the acquaintances he had formed and the
churches he had frequented. Odo prudently dwelt on the lofty tone of the
Belverde's circle, and on the privilege he had enjoyed in attending her
on a visit to the holy Abbot of the Barnabites; touching more lightly on
his connection with the Bishop, and omitting all mention of Gamba and
Crescent