s
that vary between ten minutes and three hours.

Cecilia having recovered her sight, and seen her mother, rose with
obedient alacrity.

"Good night," she said to Guido. "I am glad we are friends."

Their glances met for a moment, and Guido made an imperceptible gesture
to put out his hand, but she did not answer it. He thought her refusal a
little old-fashioned, since young girls now shake hands in Italy more
often than not; but he liked her ways, chiefly because they were hers,
and, moreover, he remembered just then that at her age she was supposed
to be barely out of the schoolroom or the convent.

CHAPTER VI

"Spiritualism, your Highness, is the devil, without doubt," said the
learned ecclesiastical archaeologist, Don Nicola Francesetti, in an
apologetic tone, and looking at his knees. "If there is anything more
heretical, it is a belief in a possible migration of souls from one body
to another, in a series of lives."

The Princess Anatolie smiled at the excellent man and exchanged a glance
of compassionate intelligence with Monsieur Leroy. She did not care a
straw what the Church thought about anything except Protestants and
Jews, and she did not believe that Don Nicola cared either. He chanced
to be a priest, instead of a professor, and it was of course his duty to
protest against heresy when it was thrust under his cogitative
observation. Spiritualism was not exactly heresy, therefore he said it
was the devil, and no mistake; but as she was sure that he did not
believe in the devil, that only proved that he did not believe in
spiritualism.

In this she was mistaken, however, as people often are in their judgment
of priests. Nicola Francesetti had long ago placed his conscience in
safety, so to speak, by telling himself that he was not a theologian,
but an archaeologist, and that as he could not afford to divide his time
and his intelligence between two subjects, where one was too vast, it
was therefore his plain duty to think about all questions of religion as
the Church taught him to think. He admitted that if his life could begin
again he would perhaps not again enter the priesthood, but he would
never have conceded that he could have been anything but a believing
Catholic. He had no vocation whatever for saving souls, whereas he
possessed the archaeological gift in a high degree; and yet, as a
clergyman and a good Christian, he was convinced at heart that a man in