e times, on a
Sunday, he walked over to Saint Peter's and listened to the music at
Vespers, as many foreigners used to do. Stefanone followed him into the
church and watched him from a distance. Once the peasant saw Donna
Francesca, whom he knew by sight as a member of the Braccio family,
sitting within the great gate of the Chapel of the Choir, where the
service was held. Lord Redin always followed the frequented streets,
which led in an almost direct line from the Piazza di Spagna by the Via
Condotti to the bridge of Saint Angelo. It was the nearest way. He never
went back to the Via della Frezza, for he had no desire to see Paul
Griggs, and his curiosity had been satisfied by once looking at the
house in which his daughter had lived. He spent his evenings alone in
his rooms with a bottle of wine and a book. Luxury had become a habit
with him, and he now preferred a draught of Chateau Lafitte to the rough
Roman wine barely a year old, while three or four glasses of a certain
brandy, twenty years in bottle, which he had discovered in the hotel,
were a necessary condition of his comfort. He had the intention of going
out one evening, in cloak and soft hat, as of old, to dine in his old
corner at the Falcone, but he put it off from day to day, feeling no
taste for the coarser fare and the rougher drink when the hour came.

He often went to see Francesca Campodonico in the middle of the day, at
which hour the Roman ladies used to be visible to their more intimate
friends. An odd sort of sympathy had grown up between the two, though
they scarcely ever alluded to past events, and then only by an accident
which both regretted. Francesca exercised a refining influence upon the
gloomy Scotchman, and as he knew her better, he even took the trouble to
be less rough and cynical when he was with her. In character she was
utterly different from his dead wife, but there was something of family
resemblance between the two which called up memories very dear to him.

Her influence softened him. In his wandering life he had more than once
formed acquaintances with men of tastes more or less similar to his own,
which might have ripened into friendships for a man of less morose
character. But in that, he and Paul Griggs were very much alike. They
found an element in every acquaintance which roused their distrust, and
as men to men they were both equally incapable of making a confidence.
Dalrymple's life had not brought him into close rela