ster Gabrielle remained together until ten, and the day was over. There
was no more variation in the routine of their lives than if they had been
moved by a machinery connected with the great castle clock overhead,
which chimed the hours and the quarters by day and night, and regulated
the doings of the town below.

But in spite of this unchanging sequence of similar habit, the time
passed pleasantly for Corona. She had had too much of the brilliant
lights and the buzzing din of society for the last five years, too much
noise, too much idle talk, too much aimless movement; she needed rest,
too, from the constant strain of her efforts to fulfil her self-imposed
duties towards her husband--most of all, perhaps, she required a respite
from the sufferings she had undergone through her stifled love for
Giovanni Saracinesca. All this she found in the magnificent calm of
the life at Astrardente. She meditated long upon the memory of her
husband, recalling lovingly those things which had been most worthy in
him, willingly forgetting his many follies and vanities and moments of
petulance. She went over in her mind the many and varied scenes of the
past, and learned to love the sweet and silent solitude of the present by
comparison of it with all the useless and noisy activity of the world she
had for a time abandoned. She had not expected to find anything more than
a passive companion in Sister Gabrielle; but in the course of their daily
converse she discovered in her a character of extreme refinement and
quick perception, a depth of human sympathy and a breadth of experience
which amazed her, and made her own views of things seem small. The Sister
was devout and rigid in the observance of the institutions of her order,
in so far as she was able to follow out the detail of religious
regulation without interfering with the convenience of her companion;
but in her conversation she showed an intimate knowledge of character
which was a constant source of pleasure to Corona, who told the Sister
long stories of people she had known for the sake of hearing her
admirable comments upon social questions.

But besides her reading and her long hours of meditation and her talks
with Sister Gabrielle, Corona found occupation in the state of the town
below her residence. She attempted once or twice to visit the poor
cottages, in the hope of doing some good; but she found that she was
such an object of holy awe to the inmates that they were spe