he unhappy, or
crossed in love?"

"She? They did not give her time! Before she could shut an eye and say,
'Little youth, you please me, and I wish you well,' they put her in. And
that door, when it is shut, who shall open it? The Madonna, perhaps? But
she was of the Princes of Gerano, and there must be one of them for an
abbess, and the lot fell upon her. There is the whole history. You may
hear her singing sometimes, if you stand under the garden wall, on the
narrow path after the Benediction hour and before Ave Maria. But I am a
fool to tell you, for you will go and listen, and when you have heard
her voice you will be like a madman. You will fall in love with her. I
was a fool to tell you."

"Well? And if I do fall in love with her, who cares?" Dalrymple slowly
filled a glass of wine.

"If you do?" The young girl's eyes shot a quick, sharp glance at him.
Then her face suddenly grew grave as she saw that some one was at the
street door, looking in cautiously. "Come in, Sor Tommaso!" she called,
down the table. "Papa is out, but we are here. Come in and drink a glass
of wine!"

The doctor, wrapped in a long broadcloth cloak with a velvet collar,
and having a case of instruments and medicines under his arm, glanced
round the room and came in.

"Just a half-foglietta, my daughter," he said. "They have sent for me.
The abbess is very ill, and I may be there a long time. If you think
they would remember to offer a Christian a glass up there, you are very
much mistaken."

"They are nuns," laughed Annetta. "What can they know?"

She rose to get the wine for the doctor. There had not been a trace of
displeasure in her voice nor in her manner as she spoke.

CHAPTER IV.

SOR TOMMASO was rarely called to the convent. In fact, he could not
remember that he had been wanted more than half a dozen times in the
long course of his practice in Subiaco. Either the nuns were hardly ever
ill, or else they must have doctored themselves with such simple
remedies as had been handed down to them from former ages. Possibly they
had been as well off on the whole as though they had systematically
submitted to the heroic treatment which passed for medicine in those
days. As a matter of fact, they suffered chiefly from bad colds; and
when they had bad colds, they either got well, or died, according to
their several destinies. Sor Tommaso might have saved some of them; but
on the other hand, he might have helped some others rath