mischief.

"My poor child," he said, resting his hand on her curls, and gently
smoothing them. "You are what the French call an _enfant terrible_. You
are what the English call a deuced sharp little pickle. And I must try,
if I can, without actually lying, to persuade you that you are utterly
mistaken, utterly and absolutely mistaken,"--he raised his voice, for
greater convincingness,--"and that her name is nothing distantly
resembling the name that you have spoken, and that in fact her name is
Mrs. Harris, and that in fine there is no such person, and that I was
merely talking hypothetically, in abstractions; I must draw a herring
across the trail, I must raise a dust, and throw a lot of it into your
amazingly clear-sighted little eyes. Now, is it definitely impressed
upon you that her name is _not_--the thrice-adorable name you
mentioned?"

"I thought it was," answered Annunziata. "I am sorry it is not." And
then she dismissed the subject. "See, it is raining harder. See how the
rain comes down in long strings of beads,--see how it is like a network
of long strings of glass beads falling through the air. When the rain
comes down like that, it means that after the rain stops it will be very
hot. To-morrow it will be very hot."

The bell in the clock-tower tolled out seven solemn strokes; then the
lighter-toned and nimbler-tongued bell of the church began to ring.

"Come," peremptorily said Annunziata, jumping up. "Mass."

She held out her hand, took John's, and, like a mother, led the meek and
unquestioning young man to his duties.

II

Of course there are no such heretical inventions as pews in the parish
church of Sant' Alessina. You sit upon orthodox rush-bottomed chairs,
you kneel upon orthodox bare stones. But at the Epistle side of the
altar, at an elevation of perhaps a yard from the pavement, there is a
recess in the wall, enclosed by a marble balustrade, and hung with faded
red curtains, which looks, I'm afraid, a good deal like a private box at
a theatre, and is in fact the tribune reserved for the masters of the
Castle. (In former days those masters were the Sforzas. So, from this
tribune, the members of that race of iron and blood, of fierceness and
of guile, have assisted at the mystical sacrifice of the Lamb of God!)
Heretofore, during John's residence at the presbytery, the tribune had
stood vacant. To-day it was occupied by Maria Dolores and Frau Brandt.
Maria Dolores, instead of weari