spoke of you as I felt," went on Mother Veronica "and she seemed to like to hear all, which was but natural, since she saved your life, and found you so cruelly injured in the forest; though she said you owed her little, and that the dog had done more for yon than she had. She looked long at the painting. 'The English stranger has honoured me too much,' she said at last; 'and so, holy mother, have you. The portrait—my portrait—should not be chosen for any altar-piece. Hang it, rather, in the shadow, with that Guido's Magdalen.' And with those words, my son, she bade me farewell, and I felt, all sinful though it was to feel such a thing for a mere mortal creature, as though the light had sunk out of Monastica when she was gone. Ah! just such beauty must have been the beauty of the glorified Dorothea, when she brought the summer-roses and the golden fruit of Paradise at midnight to the stricken unbeliever!"
Erceldoune stood long silent, leaning against the embrasure, with his head bent; except under the immediate impulse of passion, many words were not natural to him.
"Is she married?" he said, suddenly, after a lengthened pause.
"I cannot tell, my son. She said nothing of
