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met at her feet. Above her head was a square canopy, over the edge of which delicate green vines and tendrils waved, while in and out among them, tiny birds fluttered and chirped. [Illustration: "A court-yard embellished by an exquisite old stone staircase"] As Vittorio rested on his oar, Kenwick took pains to assure May that there were no longer any lights burned before these Madonnas, and Vittorio was called upon to account for the omission. While he eagerly claimed that the Madonna at his ferry was never left without a light, between sundown and sunrise;--_mai, mai!_--Pauline replied to a remark that Geoffry had made an hour previous. "The feeling one has about your mother," she said, "almost makes a Catholic of one. You can see how natural it is for these poor fellows to worship the Madonna, and how much better it must make them." "It is humanizing," Geoffry admitted. "There's no doubt of it"; and thereupon it struck him, for the first time, that there was a look of his mother in Pauline Beverly's face. Perhaps that accounted for something that had perplexed him of late. [Illustration: "The Madonnas, under their iron canopies, looked down, serene and beneficent"] X A Benediction The thing that had perplexed Geoffry Daymond was nothing less inexplicable than the persistency with which the face of Pauline Beverly had come to insinuate itself into his thoughts. When in her society, to be sure, he was not aware of regarding her with an exclusive interest. Indeed it was, more particularly, May who amused and occupied him, as often as Kenwick gave her the chance. The individuality of that surprisingly pretty young person was so sharp-cut and incisive that it fixed attention. It not infrequently happened that everybody present desisted from conversation, merely for the pleasure of a placid contemplation of her mental processes. These were simple, and to the point, and usually played about visible objects. The vital matter with May, in each and every experience, was to formulate a judgment and to compare it with that of other people. If others differed from her, all the better. Opposition is a sharpener of the wits; and she found Kenwick invaluable in his character of universal sceptic. No one but Uncle Dan ever really took her down, and that he did so neatly, that she was never seriously disconcerted by it. Had it been otherwise, Uncle Dan would have held his peace, for he prized the exuberanc
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