the prospect of happiness had been removed from the now to the hereafter—­the dim and shadowy glass in which we love to see any reflection save that of our present lives.  And to her, thus living in submission to the consequences of her choice, that faith in things better which had inspired her to sacrifice was the chief remaining source of consolation.  There was a good man to whom she went for advice, as she had gone to him ever since she could remember.  When she found herself in trouble she never hesitated.  Padre Filippo was to her the living proof of the possibility of human goodness, as faith is to us all the evidence of things not seen.

Corona was in trouble now—­in a trouble so new that she hardly understood it, so terrible and yet so vague that she felt her peril imminent.  She did not hesitate, therefore, nor change her mind upon the morning following the day of the meet, but drove to the church of the Capuchins in the Piazza Barberini, and went up the broad steps with a beating heart, not knowing how she should tell what she meant to tell, yet knowing that there was for her no hope of peace unless she told it quickly, and got that advice and direction she so earnestly craved.

Padre Filippo had been a man of the world in his time—­a man of great cultivation, full of refined tastes and understanding of tastes in others, gentle and courteous in his manners, and very kind of heart.  No one knew whence he came.  He spoke Italian correctly and with a keen scholarly use of words, but his slight accent betrayed his foreign birth.  He had been a Capuchin monk for many years, perhaps for more than half his lifetime, and Corona could remember him from her childhood, for he had been a friend of her father’s; but he had not been consulted about her marriage,—­she even remembered that, though she had earnestly desired to see him before the wedding-day, her father had told her that he had left Rome for a time.  For the old gentleman was in terrible earnest about the match, so that in his heart he feared lest Corona might waver and ask Padre Filippo’s advice; and he knew the good monk too well to think that he would give his countenance to such a sacrifice as was contemplated in marrying the young girl to old Astrardente.  Corona had known this later, but had hardly realised the selfishness of her father, nor indeed had desired to realise it.  It was sufficient that he had died satisfied in seeing her married to a great noble, and that she had been able, in his last days, to relieve him from the distress of debt and embarrassment which had doubtless contributed to shorten his life.