as
the Signora's favourite--that indeed she seemed wrapt up in him; that
he died of a rapid decline a few months after Mr. Selby had hired the
place, and that shortly after his death the Signora left the place and
never returned to it; that it was little more than a year that she had
lived with her husband before this final separation took place. The girl
remained with Mr. Selby, who cherished and loved her as his own child.
Her Christian name was Isaura, the boy's Luigi. A few years later, Mr.
Selby left the villa and went to Naples, where they heard he had died.
They could give no information as to what had become of his wife: Since
the death of her boy that lady had become very much changed--her spirits
quite broken, no longer violent. She would sit alone and weep bitterly.
The only person out of her family she would receive was the priest; till
the boy's death she had never seen the priest, nor been known to attend
divine service.

"Was the priest living?"

"Oh, no; he had been dead two years. A most excellent man--a saint,"
said the peasant's wife.

"Good priests are like good women," said the peasant, drily; "there are
plenty of them, but they are all underground."

On which remark the wife tried to box his ears. The contadino had
become a freethinker since the accession of the house of Savoy. His wife
remained a good Catholic. Said the peasant as, escaping from his wife,
he walked into the high-road with Graham, "My belief, Eccellenza, is,
that the priest did all the mischief."

"What mischief?"

"Persuaded the Signora to leave her husband. The Inglese was not a
Catholic. I heard the priest call him a heretic. And the padre, who,
though not so bad as some of his cloth, was a meddling bigot, thought it
perhaps best for her soul that it should part company with a heretic's
person. I can't say for sure, but I think that was it. The padre seemed
to triumph when the Signora was gone." Graham mused. The peasant's
supposition was not improbable. A woman such as Louise Duval appeared to
be--of vehement passions and ill-regulated mind--was just one of those
who, in a moment of great sorrow, and estranged from the ordinary
household affections, feel, though but imperfectly, the necessity of a
religion, and, ever in extremes, pass at once from indifferentism into
superstition.

Arrived at Naples, Graham heard little of Selby except as a literary
recluse, whose only distraction from books was the operatic stage. But