UNTYING GORDIAN KNOTS.

X.

LADY SACKVIL'S JOURNAL.

"I have been playing the part of a peri at the gates of paradise. I have been watching Mary Vane with her child. My life looks to me unbearable. I am a blunder on the part of nature. I have the passions of a man and the follies of a woman. This is the last entry I shall make in this book. Once for all I will put my agony into words, and then throw this wretched record of three months into the canal, to rot with the other impurities thrown daily into the sluggish flood.

When first I allowed myself to exercise my power over Vane, it was from mere coquetry and love of excitement. I wished to reassert my sway and punish his former cruelty. Later I dreamed of a Platonic love, à la Récamier and Chateaubriand. True, one pities Mesdames de Chateaubriand, viewing them as a class; but they must suffer for their bad management. I did not recognize, I do not recognize the claims of so-called duty; I lack motive. Virtue as virtue does not attract me; neither does sin as sin attract me. I want to have my own way. Gratified self-will has afforded me the only permanent enjoyment of my life; but it has this disadvantage. While you rule your will and indulge it for fancy's sake, the pleasure is unquestionable. When your will begins to rule you, there is no slavery so galling. I had not thought of this; I know it now.

Once for all, I put my torture into words. I love him. Ten years ago I buried my heart—in sand or sawdust, or something else, where grass and flowers cannot grow. It has risen now in an awful resurrection, and taken possession of me. He might have been all mine. I wish to hate his wife, and am forced to honor her profoundly. I cannot leave this place. My will refuses to let me go. Oh! if I stay here and do not say one word, where is the harm? And if he should utter the word I dare not say—"

Amelia paused shuddering. "O subtle—O inexorable horror!" she said. Then, enveloping the book in paper, she carried it out onto the balcony, and dropped it into the canal, and heard the splash, and marked with satisfaction its disappearance beneath the dull green water.

"There—that's gone!" she said, and reëntered the room. Her face, which reflected every change of mood, grew very white.

"It is not gone!" she cried; and pressing her hands to her breast exclaimed, "It is here; it is my double—my bosom serpent! O God! how it gnaws!"

She went to a press, and pulling open drawers and slides, sought something eagerly. Then, as if forgetting the object of her search, paused in deep thought, and finally rang the bell violently.

Josephine came promptly, but unsurprised, being used to vehemence on the part of her mistress.

"You may pack my trunks. I shall leave Venice to-morrow."

The maid proceeded to take out dress after dress and fold them. When one trunk was packed, Lady Sackvil who had been standing on the balcony in the blazing sun, looking down into the water, glanced over her shoulder.

"You may pack the other boxes another day," she remarked calmly; "I shall not go to-morrow. Your dinner-bell is ringing; you can go."

She locked the door behind Josephine, and then returned to her researches in the press. At last she produced a small vial of laudanum, and, sitting down before the toilette-table, poured a little into a glass and paused. "I wish I knew how much to take," she said ponderingly; "it would be so tiresome to take too little or too much." Then she fell to considering herself in the mirror—looked anxiously at the faint commencement of a wrinkle between her eyebrows; and pushing back her hair, revealed a gray hair or two hidden beneath the dark locks so full of sunny gleams. "I will do it," she said, and then took a few drops; then paused again. "I can't—I won't!" she said violently. "I'm afraid; I'm afraid of hell—I'm afraid of that horrid, clammy thing they call death! I'm afraid of making poor, good little Flora miserable! Oh! I'm afraid of myself, dead or alive," she moaned, rocking herself to and fro, in a passion of regret and pain.

At last the paroxysm passed. She poured back the laudanum, washed the glass, replaced every thing accurately, and threw herself on the couch. There, overcome by the drug, to which her healthy frame was wholly unaccustomed, she fell into a heavy sleep.

The plea of weariness afforded an excuse for going early to bed. When she awoke the second time, the Campanile clock was striking two. A rain was falling, pattering on the canal, dripping and trickling from the eaves and from the pointed traceries above the windows. She got up, put on a white wrapper, and went out onto the balcony. The rain felt cool on her burning head. It drenched her to the skin, and dripped from her hair. Yet still she stood there, crying bitter tears that brought no relief, shaken with sobs that she with difficulty prevented from becoming cries. She wrung her hands with grief, and passion, and pain. Night added nothing to the darkness in her soul; dawn brought neither light nor hope of change; and when at last she went in from the cold, gray morning light, to change her wet clothes and creep into bed, it was to a second dose of laudanum that she owed the temporary bliss of oblivion.

XI.

"If you're looking for Mr. Nicholas, Miss Vane, he's gone down to the first floor," said Deborah, the morning after Lady Sackvil's visit.

Mary went to Mr. Holston's writing-room; no one was there; passed on through drawing-rooms, dining-room, and ante-chambers, without meeting a soul, and at last found herself standing outside Lady Sackvil's music-room. Knocking and receiving no answer, she opened the door, which moved noiselessly on its hinges, and lifted the heavy crimson curtain. Her husband was standing with his back to the door, leaning against the mantel-piece. Lady Sackvil stood before him, her face buried in her hands. He spoke, but in a voice so hoarse and dissonant that Mary fancied for an instant there was a third person with them.

"Be satisfied with your success, Amelia," he said. "You have lighted the fire of hell in my heart. You have turned my affections away from my wife, who is too pure for things like you and me to love. It may add to your satisfaction to know that there is one person on earth I despise more than Lady Sackvil, and that person is myself."

He turned, and saw his wife standing in the doorway.

"How much have you heard?" he asked calmly, without showing either surprise or annoyance.

"Enough to make me say, 'God help us both,'" she replied.

"Amen," he said, and left the room. Mary was about to follow him, when a look of entreaty from Lady Sackvil checked her. In another instant Amelia was crouching on the ground, her face buried in the folds of Mary's gown. There was dead silence in the room. The ticking of the Louis Quatorze clock on the mantel and the flap of a window-curtain were the only sounds to be heard. Charity pleaded for the wretched woman kneeling at her feet. Nature cried, "Follow him; tear from him some consolation; make him wake you from this nightmare, and say he loves you!" Charity conquered. Mary bent over Lady Sackvil to raise her from the ground; but at the first touch, Amelia lifted her head, exclaiming, "I will never rise; I will die here unless you say you forgive me!"

"How can you ask pardon," replied Mary "for an injury you have only just completed?"

Amelia crouched still nearer to the ground.

"So help me heaven!" she said in a voice of agony, "I never meant to speak. He came to-day—oh! you who possess him, can't you see how it happened; how I forgot every thing—resolutions, dignity, decency—and spoke?"

"Why do you say I possess him?" asked Mary bitterly. "You heard him say that you had turned away his heart from me."

"I have not turned it toward myself. He repulsed me like a dog. Oh! if there were a hole underground where I could hide, I would crawl into it." And she flung herself on her face with a despairing groan.

Mary knelt down beside her. "We are both in the presence of God," she said; "and I forgive you now even as I hope to be forgiven."

Amelia rose with difficulty, made an effort to reach the bedroom door, tottered, and would have fallen but for Mary's assistance, who unlocked the door and helped her to a sofa. Then, looking round the room for some restorative, her eye rested on a little vial standing in a crimson wine-glass. She took it up and saw that it was labelled "laudanum."

"Have you taken any of this?" she asked, carrying it to the sofa.

"Only yesterday—never before," Lady Sackvil answered feebly. "It would make me sleep now and do me good. You might give me a few drops; or rather, no, leave it with me," she said, holding out her trembling hand. "I can take it, if necessary, myself."

"Wait a moment," said Mary, and going to the window, she threw the bottle over the railing. Then sitting down beside Amelia, she took the feverish hand in both her own. "Promise me, swear to me, that you will not take that or any other narcotic or stimulant."

"You have prevented me from doing you the only kindness in my power," said Amelia, sitting up and pushing the hair back from her crimson temples. "You have forgiven me; you have treated me like the Christian you profess to be. I meant to repay you by taking myself out of this loathsome world."

"Repay me by living and repenting," answered Mary earnestly. "Promise me not to make an eternity of this passing anguish. There is work for you to do; there is heaven for you to win. Promise me to live, and to live for God."

Lady Sackvil looked at her silently for several minutes. Then she said, "I acknowledge one thing—I acknowledge that you are good, in spite of circumstances." She lay down and turned her face to the wall. "I will live," she said wearily, "if you will help me to live; otherwise I shall die."

"I will help you," Mary said. "Now I must go. Shall I ring for your maid?"

"No. If Flora can come, I will have her; otherwise, I would rather be alone. I feel wretched and heavy, and shall fall asleep presently."

Mary found Mrs. Holston in her sitting-room. "Lady Sackvil is ill, and wants you," she said breathlessly; for, now that her duty was done, every minute seemed an age until she could see Nicholas. "Don't stop me, please; I must go." As she put her hand on the hall door, Mr. Holston opened it from outside. She brushed by him without a word; but he saw her blanched face, and followed her with his eyes as she ran up-stairs. "The blow has fallen," he said to himself, as he hung his hat in the hall. "Poor, poor child!"

She went to the study door and turned the handle. It was locked. She paused a moment, thinking her husband would admit her; then walked on through the gallery to her own room, shut the door, and sat down in her little sewing-chair. She was stunned; mercifully stunned. It all seemed a dream, from which there would soon be an awakening. Of course, it could not be true that her husband had shut her out from his confidence. She felt too dull to understand all this. "God knows what it means," she said half-aloud; "I don't." How far from her eyes seemed the tears, crowded back, as it were, to make the weight on her heart more unbearable. "Some women faint or cry out when they are hurt," she thought idly; "I wonder why I don't? I feel so dumb, so gray, so smothered."

A knock came at the nursery door. Dragging one foot after the other, she went and opened it. Deborah started at sight of her face, but made no comment. "It is time to take baby," she said cheerfully. "The cap'n's asking for you. He can't think what's become of you." Mary darted past her and ran out into the gallery.

XII.

Nicholas was sitting at the study table, looking over papers. He rose and drew forward a chair for her, and then sat down again.

"The best thing that could happen, under the circumstances," he said, "has come to pass. I am appointed to join the French army in the Crimea, for purposes of study. Here is the appointment. These are letters from General Scott and from the Secretary of War. Just glance at them, if you please."

She read them, almost without comprehending their meaning. "When do you go?"

"To-morrow morning. It is the best thing to do, under the circumstances."

"Yes, the best under the circumstances," she repeated after him. He looked at her anxiously, but said nothing.

"What are you to take with you?" she asked, rising from her chair. "I must go and look over your clothes."

"All the military traps I have here, of course; not much besides, for I would rather buy what I want. Don't trouble yourself, my—" He paused. "I will see to every thing."

"No, I want to do it myself," she said.

"I must go and speak to Holston about your money matters while I am gone. He will do every thing a brother could do."

"Every thing," she said. He looked at her again uneasily, and seemed about to speak; then left the room. "I've killed her," he thought; "but words are mere insults now."

He was gone, and without one word of explanation. It was, then, no nightmare, to be dispelled by a change of posture. There was no awakening for her. It was all true!

XIII.

Mary was alone with the baby. Georgina's tiny hand was clasped around her mother's finger; rosy cheek and dewy lip invited many a loving maternal caress. At least here was love, without anxiety or heart-ache. "My love for this child, to whom I have given life, is faint in comparison to God's love for his creatures," she thought. "My soul shall rest on him, as Georgie rests in my arms. He knows the way out of this blackness. I will follow him trustfully."

The day was hard to bear; wife's work without wife's consolation. Sewing, sorting, packing, filled the hours too closely to leave much time for active grief. They were services that could easily have been performed by a servant; but Mary, amid the perplexity which clouded her life, kept one purpose clearly before her—to fulfil her duties thoroughly toward her husband, and even toward the unhappy woman who had poisoned her happiness, and thus prevent further entanglement.

The dinner hour, whose claims prevail over every other external circumstance in life, was lived through, thanks to the presence of Italian servants, who do not expect friends to look happy on the eve of separation, and are ready to melt into tears of sympathy at a moment's warning. Vane passed the evening in his study, transacting business with Mr. Holston and a lawyer; Mary in his dressing-room, attending to "last things."

At intervals through the weary night she heard him moving about in the library. About five o'clock, the peculiar click of the hall door told her that he had gone out. Then came two hours of sleep, and memory's dreadful reckoning when she awoke.

Breakfast was served at nine o'clock. After going through the dismal form which represents eating on such occasions, Nicholas went to the window to watch for the gondola. "Will you come here, Mary?" he said.

She went to him, and measured despairingly, as he talked to her, the gulf which separated them spiritually while they stood side by side.

After giving various directions as to material arrangements during his absence, he said, "I went to confession this morning, and to your Padre Giulio." She looked up eagerly into his sad face, stern with the rigidity of repressed emotion. "After confession, I saw him in his own room, and told him all the circumstances of the last three months, out of the confessional, in order that you may feel free to seek from him the advice and consolation I have shown myself unfit to give you."

"I don't want to speak of these things to any one," Mary answered.

"I have no right to urge you," he said; "but you will oblige me very much by speaking to him once, at least, upon the subject. I cannot tell you the weight it added to my self-reproach to find him ignorant of the wrongs you have suffered, knowing as I do the entire confidence you repose in him personally. You have been very loyal to me, Mary; I shall never forget it."

"Of course, I told him nothing concerning any one but myself."

"I have another favor to ask, which I should not ask if you were like other women."

"What is it?"

He took a note from his desk, and gave it to her unfolded. "After reading that, I beg you to give it to Lady Sackvil."

She flushed, and a slight trembling passed over her. Then she folded the note and put it into her pocket. "I will give it to her without reading it. I trust you."

Nicholas looked at her with an expression of reverence in his face. "I will earn the right to tell you how deeply I honor you," he said. "Any thing I could say now would appear like a new phase of moral weakness; but I will earn the right to speak."

As Mary met his eyes, fixed upon her with a look of reverential tenderness, her heart cried out for him. She longed to throw herself upon his breast; to urge him to put off this dreadful parting, and treat the wretched delusion he had yielded to as a dream. But something unanswerable within her soul warned her to let him leave her, that his resolutions might grow strong in solitude; that he might learn by aching experience the worth of the love and sympathy he had slighted. Therefore, she only said, "All will be well; I know it, I feel it." And he answered, "I accept your words as a prophecy, and thank God for them. One favor still I must ask. Mary, you will write to me?"

"Constantly."

"God bless you. Holston will find out when the mails go. It will be the one happiness of my life to look forward to your letters, which must give me every detail about yourself and about our child. Mary, it will be my one earthly hope to look forward to the time which shall end my exile."

The gondola was at the door, and George Holston had already taken his place in it. Vane clasped his wife's hands in his, kissed them passionately, and rushed from the room.

XIV.

"I never knew her to faint before," Deborah's voice was saying, as Mary emerged from an abyss of peaceful oblivion, to find herself deluged with eau de Cologne, and lying on the bed in her own room.

"Poor little soul!" answered Mrs. Holston's gentle voice. "It was a terrible shock, his going so suddenly. But, hush now, she is coming to herself."

No, not to herself; to a consciousness of nameless agony; to a sense of restlessness, without physical strength for action; to a crushing weight of misery which she must ask no living soul to share.

After some minutes, which seemed like hours of struggling to recover breath, and voice, and senses, she succeeded in thanking her kind nurses, and asking them to leave her alone for a little while.

An hour's solitude had restored her to complete consciousness, when a servant knocked on the door and asked whether she had any further occasion for the gondola, which had returned from carrying Captain Vane to the steamer. Her husband's request that she would see Padre Giulio occurred to her. Life must be taken up somewhere; why not in the performance of that duty, which would become harder with every day it should be deferred?

If she called upon Deborah for assistance, she would be prevented from leaving the house; so her preparations must be made alone. Giving orders for the gondola to wait, she put on hat and shawl with trembling hands, and walked down the long flights of marble stairs, holding on to the balustrade for support. It was useless to attempt her mission in that condition; perhaps an hour's row that soft, gray, overshadowed morning might restore her nerves to equilibrium. "Put up the awning and row on the lagoon for an hour," she said to the gondoliers. "Then take me to the Piazza San Marco without my giving you any further directions."

Through the open windows of the ducal palace she could see tourists wandering about, Murray in hand. Soldiers were lolling under the arcades; sight-seers were hurrying through to and fro, taking advantage of the cool day to get through a double amount of work. A sacristan was cleaning down the steps of Santa Maria della Salute, flinging away the broom, and sitting down to rest after the labor of sweeping each step.

Then came a long period of quiet, broken only by the steady dip of oars, and an occasional remark in gondolier slang made by the two boatmen. Pearly sky and pearly sea, a soft breeze and monotonous motion exercised a soothing influence over poor Mary, who never resisted comfort, no matter in how homely a form it might come. On the steps behind the Armenian convent sat a monk, looking over the lagoon. He was a commonplace old man enough in appearance, some insignificant lay brother resting from his labors in the garden. He saw the boat approach, and noticed probably the expression of suffering on Mary's face; for as she passed, a look of kindness, that was in itself a benediction, came into his wrinkled, brown face, and sank into her poor wounded heart, never to be forgotten. From that day she remembered the old Armenian in her prayers as one who had helped her in the sorest trial of her life.

XV.

In the afternoon came Mrs. Holston, for once in her life in a hurry. "I am ashamed to disturb you," she said to Mary. "I am ashamed to say why I have come. Amelia is behaving in the most extraordinary manner. She refuses to get up, and refuses to see the doctor. She says no one can do her any good except you. I told her she was very selfish, and she said she didn't care; so now I can only ask you, for charity's sake, to come down and speak to her."

"Certainly," said Mary, by a stupendous effort speaking in a natural tone; "I will come in a few minutes. I have a little note for your sister from my husband that she may be glad to get. Did he find time to come and bid you good by?"

"Yes, indeed, but he looked dreadfully worried and unhappy, of course. I think it extremely ill-natured of the War Department to make him leave home so suddenly. That must have been what made you look so frightfully ill yesterday morning. I was very much alarmed about you."

"I will follow you directly," said Mary, escaping to her own room for a moment of preparation before facing the enemy of her peace.

But that her peace was hopelessly shaken, she no longer feared. The interview with Padre Giulio had been full of consolation; for to this impartial listener Vane had said many things that the fear of seeming insincere had prevented him from expressing to his wife. It was plain that delicacy toward herself and compassion for Lady Sackvil had made him leave Venice. She now felt that it would show a lack of faith to doubt that the future would bring happiness to them both; that their reunion would be one such as death itself confirms instead of severing.

She found Lady Sackvil looking enchantingly lovely. Her hair, dark brown, with golden red lights in it, was plaited in two great braids; her cheeks were flushed; her eyes were closed, showing their long lashes and large, full lids to advantage. By the quivering of her lips, Mary knew that she felt who was with her; but it was some minutes before she opened her eyes.

"It was kind in you to come," she said at last, looking up into Mary's face. "I am very grateful. Flora says I'm horribly selfish to send for you, and no doubt I am; but it is better than going crazy, I suppose."

Mary laid her hand on the throbbing forehead, and felt the quick pulses. "Do you feel really ill?" she asked; "or is this merely a state of nervous excitement?"

"I'm not ill. I was never seriously ill in my life. I am only going distracted. I had an idea you might do something for me."

"The first thing to be done is to quiet your nerves and reduce the fever. Then we will think of other remedies. I will get Flora's little medicine-chest, and see what its resources are."

The morning passed quietly in tending Lady Sackvil, varied by occasional visits to the nursery. It was hard to bear, "but no harder than any thing else would be now," thought Mary. "If I can save this poor soul, it will be worth suffering great as this."

By two o'clock, Amelia was physically more tranquil. Her health had always been excellent, and her temperament, though utterly undisciplined, by no means inclined to morbid excitability.

"I have a note for you," said Mary; "will you read it?"

"From whom?"

"From my husband."

Lady Sackvil shuddered, and turned away.

"Don't give it to me," she said. "Read it, and tell me what it says."

Mary read it through to herself; then, mastering her voice, read aloud the following words:

"I was unjust to you yesterday. I treated you with cruelty. For what has happened, I am more responsible than you, because I have been under better influences. We shall never meet again. God bless you, and grant us both genuine repentance!"

Amelia made no comment or reply. A quarter of an hour later, she said, "You go to confession very often, I suppose?"

"Once a week."

"Who is your confessor?"

"Padre Giulio, at St. Mark's."

"Is he old?"

"Yes."

"Wise?"

"Yes."

"Kind?"

"Very kind."

"I should like to see him. I don't suppose that I intend going to confession, but I want to talk with such a man. Has he had much to do with making you what you are?"

"He has given me good advice, and I have tried to follow it, if that is what you mean."

Lady Sackvil looked at Mary fixedly for some time.

"I made up my mind, a short time ago," she said, "that the thing most likely to convince me of the direct influence of God would be to see a Christian whose character would bear scrutiny under the severest test. I have seen such a Christian in you. Most women would have spurned me away in disdain; you have treated me like a sister. I thank you for it, and I should like to believe what you believe."

Mary smiled at the reasoning, but thanked God for the conclusion. "You would find Padre Giulio very sympathizing," she said; "I think it would soothe you to see him. Shall I send for him to come here?"

"On no account. I will go to him if you will come with me. Do come with me; I will bless you all my life," she added pleadingly.

"Of course I will go, but not to-day. If you were to take cold now, it might be the death of you. To-morrow morning we will go to St. Mark's, and I will send him word, that we may be sure of finding him at home."

Lady Sackvil looked disappointed. "I would rather go to-day. I want to have it over."

"There's no occasion to wish to have it over," said Mary soothingly. "An experienced confessor is too well used to dealing with mental suffering to wonder at it, no matter in what shape it comes."

Lady Sackvil lay with her eyes shut a long time. At last she said, "I've not been much of a Bible reader, but I remember well that it required only the sight of one miracle to convert sinners in those days. I suppose sinners are very much the same in the nineteenth century that they were in the first."

"No doubt," said Mary, and waited to hear more.

"Your conduct toward me is, in my opinion, a greater miracle than the raising of the dead. Nothing but supernatural strength could have sustained you."

"If I have done any thing remarkable, it has certainly been God's doing, not mine."

Lady Sackvil lay still some time longer. Then she said abruptly, "I am clever, I know, but I am not intellectual; and intellectual satisfaction is not what I demand in order to become a Christian. If you were to lay before me all the tomes of all the theologians, they would not convey to my mind one single definite idea."

"You were educated a Catholic, weren't you?"

"Yes, after a fashion. I was carefully prepared for confirmation in a convent school, where I spent six months, while my aunt was in Europe."

"Then you feel more inclined toward Catholicity than to any other form of religion?"

"Certainly. If I am going to be good, I mean to be decidedly so. The church demands more than any sect, and I respect her for that reason. Like St. Christopher, I wish to serve the strongest master. Then, too, the teaching at the convent made a deeper impression on me than I supposed; and now that I need support, it all comes back to me. Last, and not least, I wish to believe as you do. You are the best Christian I have ever seen."

"Your experience in Christians must have been limited, I think," said Mary, smiling.

"Perhaps so; but I am quite satisfied to have you for my standard. Why, are you going? Oh! please don't leave me. I can't bear to be alone."

"I must go now. I will come to-morrow at eleven o'clock, and if you feel equal to the effort, we will go to San Marco."

"I shall feel equal to it physically," said Lady Sackvil. "It's very provoking. I meant to have a brain-fever and die, and I feel better every minute. I wish you had not come to take care of me."

"This is the beginning of your heroic virtue, I suppose," said Mary; "these are the first fruits of conversion. Good-by, neophyte! Disturb yourself about nothing; remember only that God loves us with a love too deep to be fathomed."

And then she went home, and sat down by the ashes that Lady Sackvil had left on her domestic hearth.

XVI.

In the morning, she found Lady Sackvil taking breakfast in her own room, looking pale and worn from the effects of reaction from fever and excitement. "How do you feel?" she asked.

"Horribly cross. I think all other sensations are merged in ill-temper."

"A certain sign of convalescence. I am glad to see it."

Amelia laid down her egg-spoon, and sank back in her chair. "I wish," she remarked, "that it had pleased Heaven to make some variety in the shape of hen's eggs. I am so tired of seeing them always oval."

"You don't want any of these things, do you?" asked Mary, surveying the rather solid repast on the table.

"No—I can't bear the sight of it," said Amelia wearily.

"Rest on the couch until I come back." And Mary arranged the cushions with a skilful hand, and left the room noiselessly.

Presently she returned, bearing on a pretty little tray a glass filled with some frothy preparation, and two transparent wafers. Amelia revived at the sight. "I have dreamed of such things," she said. "This is the very apotheosis of breakfast!"

XVII.

Mary left Lady Sackvil with Padre Giulio, and went into the church to pray for the happy result of the interview. She had passed some time at the Lady chapel, with its brazen gates and oriental lamps, and before the jewel-incrusted high altar, and was kneeling in the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, when she heard the door of the confessional behind her open. She looked round. Padre Giulio had entered the confessional; Lady Sackvil was kneeling at the grating.

She was sitting within the railing of the chapel when Amelia joined her. Mary looked at the beautiful creature; there was a peaceful smile on her lips, a holy light in her eyes; the pride, the caprice, the egotism were not there; she looked like a penitent child.

As they passed through one of the sombre side aisles, Amelia paused before the crucifix hanging on the wall. "I have confessed my sins and received absolution," she said; "are you willing to kiss me?"

And so the sign of peace was exchanged before the image of the great reconciler; and they passed out from the shadows of those grand old arches into the sunshine of the Piazza.