gh when the
Tramontana is blowing!"

"Well, have you become better mannered? May I venture to come in?" cried
Nina, appearing at the doorway.

"'Venga pure! Venga pure!'" growled out the canon. "I forgive thee
everything. Sit down beside me, and let us pledge a friendship forever."

"There, then, let this be a peace-offering," said she, taking the wreath
of flowers from her own head and placing it on the brows of the padre.
"You are now like the old Bacchus in the Boboli."

"And thou like--"

"Like what? Speak it out!" cried she, angrily.

"Come, come, do, I beseech you, be good friends," interposed Jekyl. "We
have met for other objects than to exchange reproaches."

"These are but the 'iras amantium.' boy," said the priest; "the girl
loves me with her whole heart."

"How you read my most secret thoughts!" said she, with a coquettish
affectation of sincerity.

"Lectiones pravissimae would they be!" muttered he, between his teeth.

"What is that? What is he mumbling there, Albert?" cried she, hastily.

"It is a benediction, Nina," replied Jekyl; "did you not hear the
Latin?"

Peace was at last restored, and what between the adroit devices of Jekyl
and the goodness of his champagne, a feeling of pleasant sociality now
succeeded to all the bickering in which the festivity was prolonged to
a late hour. The graver business which brought them together the Onslows
and their affairs being discussed, they gave way to all the seductions
of their exalted fancies. Jekyl, taking up his guitar, warbled out a
French love song, in a little treble a bullfinch might have envied;
Nina, with the aid of the padre's beads for castanets, stepped the
measure of a bolero; while the old priest himself broke out into a long
chant, in which Ovid, Petrarch, Anacreon, and his breviary alternately
figured, and under the influence of which he fell fast asleep at last,
totally unconscious of the corked moustaches and eyebrows with which
Nina ornamented his reverend countenance.

The sound of wheels in the silent street at last admonished them of
the hour, and opening the window, Jekyl saw a brougham belonging to Sir
Stafford just drawing up at the door.

"Francois is punctual," said Nina, looking at her watch; "I told him
five o'clock."

"Had we not better set him down first?" said Jekyl, with a gesture
toward the priest; "he does not live far away."

"With all my heart," replied she; "but you're not going to wash his
face?"

"Of