er way!"

"But indeed there is another way," said Ruth, rising with a smile.
"In my country the ill-luck falls on the first to leave the table.
And who should that be, here, but the hostess?"

Chapter III.

EARTHQUAKE.

The auto-da-fe was but a preliminary to the festivities and great
processions of All Saints. For a whole week Lisbon had been sanding
its squares and streets, painting its signboards, draping its
balconies and windows to the fourth and fifth stories with hangings
of crimson damask. Street after street displayed this uniform vista
of crimson, foil for the procession, with its riot of gorgeous
dresses, gold lace, banners, precious stones.

Ruth leaned on the balustrade of her villa garden, and looked down
over the city, from which, made musical by distance, the bells of
thirty churches called to High Mass. Their chorus floated up to her
on the delicate air; and--for the chimneys of Lisbon were smokeless,
the winter through, in all but severest weather, and the citizens did
their cooking over braziers--each belfry stood up distinct, edged
with gold by the brilliant morning sun. Aloft the sky spread its
blue bland and transparent; far below her Tagus mirrored it in a lake
of blue. Many vessels rode at anchor there. The villas to right and
left and below her, or so much of them as rose out of their
embosoming trees, took the sunlight on walls of warm yellow, with
dove-coloured shadows.

She was thinking. . . . He had tried to discover how much she
suspected; and when neither in word or look would she lower her
guard, he had turned defiant. This very morning he had told her
that, if she cared to use it, a carriage was at her disposal.
For himself, the Countess of Montalegre had offered him a seat in
hers, and he had accepted. . . . He had told her this at the last
moment, entering her room in the full court dress the state
procession demanded; and he had said it with a studied carelessness,
not meeting her eyes.

She had thanked him, and added that she was in two minds about going.
She was not dressed for the show, and doubted if her maid could array
her in time.

"We go to the Cathedral," said he. "I should recommend that or the
Church of St. Vincent, where, some say, the Mass is equally fine."

"If I go, I shall probably content myself with the procession."

"If that's so, I've no doubt Langton will escort you. He likes
processions, though he prefers executions. To a religious