med with confusion.

"My respectful reverence to his Holiness," said the Baron, smiling, "and
pray tell him that the Government will do its duty to the country and to
the civilised world, and count on the support of the Pope."

Monsignor Mario left the room without a word.

VIII

The Baron pushed out an easy-chair for Roma and twisted his own to face
it.

"How are you, my child?"

"One lives," said Roma, with a sigh.

"What is the matter, my dear? You are ill and unhappy."

She eluded the question and said, "You sent for me--what do you wish to
say?"

He told her the printer of certain seditious proclamations had been
arrested, and in the judicial inquiry preparatory to his trial he had
mentioned the name of the person who had employed and paid him.

"You cannot but be aware, my dear, that you have rendered yourself
liable to prosecution, and that nothing--nothing whatever--could have
saved you from public exposure but the good offices of a powerful
friend."

Roma drew her lips tightly together and made no answer.

"But what a situation for a Minister! To find himself ruled by his
feelings for a friend, and thus weakened in the eyes of his servants,
who ought to have no possible hold on him."

Roma's gloomy face began to be compressed with scorn.

"You have perhaps not realised the full measure of the indignity that
might have befallen you. For instance--a cruel necessity--the police
would have been making a domiciliary visitation in your apartment at
this moment."

Roma made a faint, involuntary cry, and half rose from her seat.

"Your letters and most secret papers would by this time be exposed to
the eyes of the police.... No, no, my child; calm yourself, be seated;
thanks to my intervention, this will not occur."

Roma looked at him, and found him more repulsive to her at that moment
than he had ever been before. Even his daintiness repelled her--the
modified perfume about his clothes, his waxed moustache, his rounded
finger-nails, and all the other refinements of the man who loves himself
and sets out to please the senses of women.

"You will allow, my dear, that I have had sufficient to humiliate me
without this further experience. A ward who persistently disregards the
laws of propriety and exposes herself to criticism in the most ordinary
acts of life was surely a sufficient trial. But that was not enough.
Almost as soon as you have passed out of my legal