he went for advice, as she had gone to him ever since she
could remember. When she found herself in trouble she never hesitated.
Padre Filippo was to her the living proof of the possibility of human
goodness, as faith is to us all the evidence of things not seen.

Corona was in trouble now--in a trouble so new that she hardly understood
it, so terrible and yet so vague that she felt her peril imminent. She
did not hesitate, therefore, nor change her mind upon the morning
following the day of the meet, but drove to the church of the Capuchins
in the Piazza Barberini, and went up the broad steps with a beating
heart, not knowing how she should tell what she meant to tell, yet
knowing that there was for her no hope of peace unless she told it
quickly, and got that advice and direction she so earnestly craved.

Padre Filippo had been a man of the world in his time--a man of great
cultivation, full of refined tastes and understanding of tastes in
others, gentle and courteous in his manners, and very kind of heart. No
one knew whence he came. He spoke Italian correctly and with a keen
scholarly use of words, but his slight accent betrayed his foreign birth.
He had been a Capuchin monk for many years, perhaps for more than half
his lifetime, and Corona could remember him from her childhood, for he
had been a friend of her father's; but he had not been consulted about
her marriage,--she even remembered that, though she had earnestly desired
to see him before the wedding-day, her father had told her that he had
left Rome for a time. For the old gentleman was in terrible earnest about
the match, so that in his heart he feared lest Corona might waver and ask
Padre Filippo's advice; and he knew the good monk too well to think that
he would give his countenance to such a sacrifice as was contemplated
in marrying the young girl to old Astrardente. Corona had known this
later, but had hardly realised the selfishness of her father, nor indeed
had desired to realise it. It was sufficient that he had died satisfied
in seeing her married to a great noble, and that she had been able, in
his last days, to relieve him from the distress of debt and embarrassment
which had doubtless contributed to shorten his life.

The proud woman who had thus once humbled herself for an object she
thought good, had never referred to her action again. She had never
spoken of her position to Padre Filippo, so that the monk wondered and
admired her steadfastne