ve never heard of
them. I wonder who they are."

"There is an historical Italian family of that name," said the
Archdeacon.

"I was sure of it," said Miss Winwood.

"Of what?"

"That his people--are--well--all right."

"Why are you sure?"

Ursula was very fond of her uncle. He represented to her the fine
flower of the Church of England--a gentleman, a scholar, an ideal
physical type of the Anglican dignitary, a man of unquestionable piety
and Christian charity, a personage who would be recognized for what he
was by Hottentots or Esquimaux or attendants of wagon-lits trains or
millionaires of the Middle West of America or Parisian Apaches. In him
the branch of the family tree had burgeoned into the perfect cleric.
Yet sometimes, the play of light beneath the surface of those blue
eyes, so like her own, and the delicately intoned challenges of his
courtly voice, exasperated her beyond measure. "It's obvious to any
idiot, my dear," she replied testily. "Just look at him. It speaks for
itself."

The Archdeacon put his thin hand on her plump shoulder, and smiled. The
old man had a very sunny smile. "I'm sorry to carry on a conversation
so Socratically," said he. "But what is 'it'?"

"I've never seen anything so physically beautiful, save the statues in
the Vatican, in all my life. If he's not an aristocrat to the finger
tips, I'll give up all my work, turn Catholic, and go into a
nunnery--which will distress you exceedingly. And then"--she waved a
plump hand--"and then, as I've mentioned before, he reads the Religio
Medici. The commonplace, vulgar young man of to-day no more reads Sir
Thomas Browne than he reads Tertullian or the Upanishads."

"He also reads," said the Archdeacon, stuffing his hand into Paul's
knapsack, against whose canvas the stiff outline of a book revealed
itself--"he also reads"--he held up a little fat duodecimo--"the
Chansons de Beranger."

"That proves it," cried Miss Winwood.

"Proves what?"

His blue eyes twinkled. Having a sense of humour, she laughed and flung
her great arm round his frail shoulders. "It proves, my venerable and
otherwise distinguished dear, that I am right and you are wrong."

"My good Ursula," said he, disengaging himself, "I have not advanced
one argument either in favour of, or in opposition to, one single
proposition the whole of this afternoon."

She shook her head at him pityingly.

The housekeeper entered carrying a double handful of odds and ends
wh