n by the parapet in the garden, whence she could look
up and down the gorge, and through the arches of the old mossy Roman
bridge that spanned it far down by the city-wall. All these things had
become dear to her by years of familiar silent converse. The little
garden, with its old sculptured basin, and the ever-lulling dash of
falling water,--the tremulous draperies of maiden's-hair, always beaded
with shining drops,--the old shrine, with its picture, its lamp, and
flower-vase,--the tall, dusky orange-trees, so full of blossoms and
fruit, so smooth and shining in their healthy bark,--all seemed to her
as so many dear old friends whom she was about to leave, perhaps
forever.

What this pilgrimage would be like, she scarcely knew: days and weeks of
wandering,--over mountain-passes,--in deep, solitary valleys,--as years
ago, when her grandmother brought her, a little child, from Rome.

In the last few weeks, Agnes seemed to herself to have become wholly
another being. Silently, insensibly, her feet had crossed the enchanted
river that divides childhood from womanhood, and all the sweet ignorant
joys of that first early paradise lay behind her. Up to this time her
life had seemed to her a charming dream, full of blessed visions and
images: legends of saints, and hymns, and prayers had blended with
flower-gatherings in the gorge, and light daily toils.

Now, a new, strange life had been born within her,--a life full of
passions, contradictions, and conflicts. A love had sprung up in her
heart, strange and wonderful, for one who till within these few weeks
had been entirely unknown to her, who had never toiled for, or housed,
or clothed, or cared for her as her grandmother had, and yet whom a few
short interviews, a few looks, a few words, had made to seem nearer and
dearer than the old, tried friends of her childhood. In vain she
confessed it as a sin,--in vain she strove against it; it came back to
her in every hymn, in every prayer. Then she would press the sharp cross
to her breast, till a thousand stings of pain would send the blood in
momentary rushes to her pale cheek, and cause her delicate lips to
contract with an expression of stern endurance, and pray that by any
penance and anguish she might secure his salvation.

To save one such glorious soul, she said to herself, was work enough for
one little life. She was willing to spend it all in endurance, unseen by
him, unknown to him, so that at last he should be rec