than was good for him, at a time
when if he had been his own patient he would have enforced starvation as
necessary to recovery.

Meanwhile the cardinal had exerted his influence with his sister, the
abbess, and had so far succeeded that Dalrymple, who went every day to
the convent, was now made to stand with his back to the abbess's open
door, in order that he might at least ask her questions and hear her own
answers. Many an old Italian doctor can tell of even stranger and more
absurd precautions observed by the nuns of those days. As soon as the
oral examination was over, Maria Addolorata shut the door and came out
into the parlour, where Dalrymple finished his visit, prolonging it in
conversation with her by every means he could devise.

Though encumbered with a little of the northern shyness, Dalrymple was
not diffident. There is a great difference between shyness and
diffidence. Diffidence distrusts itself; shyness distrusts the mere
outward impression made on others. At this time Dalrymple had no object
beyond enjoying the pleasure of talking with Maria Addolorata, and no
hope beyond that of some day seeing her face without the veil. As for
her voice, his present position as doctor to the convent made it foolish
for him to run the risk of being caught listening for her songs behind
the garden wall. But he had not forgotten what Annetta had told him, and
Maria Addolorata's soft intonations and liquid depths of tone in
speaking led him to believe that the peasant girl had not exaggerated
the nun's gift of singing.

One day, after he had seen her and talked with her more than half a
dozen times, he approached the subject, merely for the sake of
conversation, saying that he had been told of her beautiful voice by
people who had heard her across the garden.

"It is true," she answered simply. "I have a good voice. But it is
forbidden here to sing except in church," she added with a sigh. "And
now that my aunt is ill, I would not displease her for anything."

"That is natural," said Dalrymple. "But I would give anything in the
world to hear you."

"In church you can hear me. The church is open on Sundays at the
Benediction service. We are behind the altar in the choir, of course.
But perhaps you would know my voice from the rest because it is deeper."

"I should know it in a hundred thousand," asseverated the Scotchman,
with warmth.

"That would be a great many--a whole choir of angels!" And the nun
laughed