on the ground, as if she were pondering some absorbing
subject.

Little could her literal, hard-working grandmother, or her artistic,
simple-minded uncle, or the dreamy Mother Theresa, or her austere
confessor, know of the strange forcing process which they were all
together uniting to carry on in the mind of this sensitive young girl.
Absolutely secluded by her grandmother's watchful care from any actual
knowledge and experience of real life, she had no practical tests by
which to correct the dreams of that inner world in which she delighted
to live and move, and which was peopled with martyrs, saints, and
angels, whose deeds were possible or probable only in the most exalted
regions of devout poetry.

So she gave her heart at once and without reserve to an enthusiastic
desire for the salvation of the stranger, whom Heaven, she believed, had
directed to seek her intercessions; and when the spindle drooped from
her hand, and her eyes became fixed on vacancy, she found herself
wondering who he might really be, and longing to know yet a little more
of him.

Towards the latter part of the afternoon, a hasty messenger came to
summon her uncle to administer the last rites to a man who had just
fallen from a building, and who, it was feared, might breathe his last
unshriven.

"Dear daughter, I must hasten and carry Christ to this poor sinner,"
said the monk, hastily putting all his sketches and pencils into her
lap. "Have a care of these till I return,--that is my good little one!"

Agnes carefully arranged the sketches and put them into the book, and
then, kneeling before the shrine, began prayers for the soul of the
dying man.

She prayed long and fervently, and so absorbed did she become, that she
neither saw nor heard anything that passed around her.

It was, therefore, with a start of surprise, as she rose from prayer,
that she saw the cavalier sitting on one end of the marble sarcophagus,
with an air so composed and melancholy that he might have been taken for
one of the marble knights that sometimes are found on tombs.

"You are surprised to see me, dear Agnes," he said, with a calm, slow
utterance, like a man who has assumed a position he means fully to
justify; "but I have watched day and night, ever since I saw you, to
find one moment to speak with you alone."

"My Lord," said Agnes, "I humbly wait your pleasure. Anything that a
poor maiden may rightly do I will endeavor, in all loving duty."

"Whom do