ody would take it for a gift. The fellow was having
houses built all over the place. This very house where we are sitting
belonged to him. Dona Rita has given it to her sister, I understand. Or
at any rate the sister runs it. She is my landlady . . ."

"Her sister here!" I exclaimed. "Her sister!"

Blunt turned to me politely, but only for a long mute gaze. His eyes
were in deep shadow and it struck me for the first time then that there
was something fatal in that man's aspect as soon as he fell silent. I
think the effect was purely physical, but in consequence whatever he said
seemed inadequate and as if produced by a commonplace, if uneasy, soul.

"Dona Rita brought her down from her mountains on purpose. She is asleep
somewhere in this house, in one of the vacant rooms. She lets them, you
know, at extortionate prices, that is, if people will pay them, for she
is easily intimidated. You see, she has never seen such an enormous town
before in her life, nor yet so many strange people. She has been keeping
house for the uncle-priest in some mountain gorge for years and years.
It's extraordinary he should have let her go. There is something
mysterious there, some reason or other. It's either theology or Family.
The saintly uncle in his wild parish would know nothing of any other
reasons. She wears a rosary at her waist. Directly she had seen some
real money she developed a love of it. If you stay with me long enough,
and I hope you will (I really can't sleep), you will see her going out to
mass at half-past six; but there is nothing remarkable in her; just a
peasant woman of thirty-four or so. A rustic nun. . . ."

I may as well say at once that we didn't stay as long as that. It was
not that morning that I saw for the first time Therese of the whispering
lips and downcast eyes slipping out to an early mass from the house of
iniquity into the early winter murk of the city of perdition, in a world
steeped in sin. No. It was not on that morning that I saw Dona Rita's
incredible sister with her brown, dry face, her gliding motion, and her
really nun-like dress, with a black handkerchief enfolding her head
tightly, with the two pointed ends hanging down her back. Yes, nun-like
enough. And yet not altogether. People would have turned round after
her if those dartings out to the half-past six mass hadn't been the only
occasion on which she ventured into the impious streets. She was
frightened of the s