Winthorpe’s,—­with brown hair cropped close, and showing the white of the scalp; clean-shaven, but of a steely tint where the razor had passed; with a marked jaw-bone and a salient square chin; with a high-bridged determined nose, and a white forehead rising vertical over thick black eyebrows, and rather deep-set grey eyes,—­well, clap a steeple-crowned hat upon it, and you could have posed him for one of his own Puritan ancestors.  The very clothes of the men carried on their unlikeness,—­John’s loose blue flannels and red sailor’s knot, careless-seeming, but smart in their effect, and showing him careful in a fashion of his own; Winthorpe’s black tie and dark tweeds, as correct as Savile Row could turn them out, yet somehow, by the way he wore them, proclaiming him immediately a man who never gave two thoughts to his dress.  If, however, Winthorpe’s face was the face of a Puritan, it was the face of a Puritan with a sense of humour—­the lines about the mouth were clearly the footprints of smiles.  It seemed the face of a sensitive Puritan, as well, and (maugre that high-bridged nose) of a gentle—­the light in his clear grey eyes was a kindly and gentle light.  After all, Governor Bradford, as his writings show,—­though he tried hard, perhaps, not to let them show it—­was a Puritan with a sense of humour; John Alden and Priscilla were surely sensitive and gentle:  and Winthorpe was descended from Governor Bradford, and from John Alden and Priscilla.  The two friends walked backwards and forwards in the great open space before the Castle, and talked.  They had not met for nearly two years, and had plenty to talk about.

II

Seated at one of the open windows of the pavilion beyond the clock, Maria Dolores (in a pale green confection of I know not what airy, filmy tissue) looked down, and somewhat vaguely watched them,—­herself concealed by the netted curtain, which, according to Italian usage, was hung across the casement, to mitigate the heat and shut out insects.  She watched them at first vaguely, and only from time to time, for the rest going on with some needlework she had in her lap.  But by-and-by she dropped her needlework altogether, and her watching became continuous and absorbed.

“What a singular-looking man!” she thought, studying Winthorpe.  “What an ascetic-looking man!  He looks like an early Christian martyr.  He looks like a priest.  I believe he is a priest.  English priests,” she remembered, “when they travel, often dress as laymen.  Yes, he is a priest, and a terribly austere one—­I shouldn’t like to go to him for confession.  But in spite of his austerity, he seems to be extraordinarily happy about something just at present.  That light in his eyes,—­it is almost a light of ecstasy.  It is a light I have never seen in any eyes, save those of priests and nuns.”

Winthorpe, while that “almost ecstatic” light shone in his eyes, had been speaking.