t in a sinner.

"The people of Marca say you think too much about that foul business;
they even whisper that you neglect your holy duties," she said to him,
as she served the frugal supper of cabbage soaked in oil. "There will
always be crimes as long as the world wags on, but that is no reason why
good souls should put themselves out about that which they cannot help."

Gesualdo said nothing, but she saw the nerves of his mouth quiver.

"I have no business to lecture your reverence on your duties," she
added, tartly; "but they do say that so much anxiety for a guilty woman
is a manner of injustice to innocent souls."

Gesualdo struck his closed hand on the table with concentrated
expression of passion.

"How dare you say that she is guilty?" he cried. "Who has proved her
so?"

Candida looked at him with shrewd suspicious eyes as she set down the
bottle of vinegar.

"I have met with nobody who doubts it," she said, cruelly, "except your
reverence, and her lover up yonder at the villa."

"You are all far too ready to believe evil," said Gesualdo, with nervous
haste; and he arose and pushed aside the untasted dish and went out of
the house.

"He is beside himself for that jade's sake," thought Candida, and, after
waiting a little while to see if he returned, she sat down and ate the
cabbage.

Whether there were as many crimes in the world as flies on the pavement
in summer, she saw no reason why that good food should be wasted.

After her supper, she took her distaff and went and sat on the low wall
which divided the church ground from the road, and gossiped with any one
of the villagers who chanced to come by. No one was ever too much
occupied not to have leisure to talk in Marca, and the church wall was a
favorite gathering-place for the sunburnt women with faces like leather
under their broad summer hats or their woollen winter kerchiefs, who
came and went to and from the fields or the well or the
washing-reservoir, with its broad stone tanks brimming with brown water
under a vine-covered pergola, where the hapless linen was wont to be
beaten and banged as though it were so many sheets of cast-iron. And
here with her gossips and friends Candida could not help letting fall
little words--stray sentences--which revealed the trouble her mind was
in as to the change in her master. She was devoted to him, but her
devotion was not so strong as her love of mystery and her impatience of
anything which opposed a ba