inability to act, had cast him adrift upon a life of superficial enjoyment; and how his latent dissatisfaction with this life had inevitably resulted in self-distrust and vacillation.  “You wait your hour,” she said of him; and he seized on the phrase as a justification of his inactivity and, when chance should offer, a spur to fresh endeavour.  Her interest in the liberal cause had been intensified and exalted by her father’s death—­his martyrdom, as she described it.  Like most women possessed of an abstract idea she had unconsciously personified the idea and made a religion of it; but it was a religion of charity and not of vindictiveness.  “I should like my father’s death avenged by love and not by hate,” she said; “I would have it bring peace, not a sword.”

On one point only she remained, if not hostile yet unresponsive.  This was when he spoke of de Crucis.  Her manner hardened instantly, and he perceived that, though he dwelt on the Jesuit’s tolerant view and cultivated tastes, she beheld only the priest and not the man.  She had been eager to hear of Crescenti, whom she knew by name as a student of European repute, and to the praise of whose parochial charities she listened with outspoken sympathy; but the Jesuits stood for the Holy Office, and she had suffered too deeply at the hands of the Holy Office to regard with an open mind any who might be supposed to represent its principles.  It was impossible for Odo to make her understand how distinctly, in de Crucis’s case, the man predominated over the order; and conscious of the painfulness of the subject, he gave up the attempt to interest her in his friend.

Three or four times he was permitted to visit her in her cell:  after that they met almost daily in the parlour, where, about the hour of benediction, they could talk almost as privately under cover of the general chatter.  In due time Fulvia received an answer from the Calvinist professor, who assured her of a welcome in Geneva and shelter under his roof.  Odo, meanwhile, had perfected the plan of their journey; but as Michaelmas approached he began to fear Cantapresto’s observation.  He now bitterly regretted that he had not held to his purpose of sending the soprano back to Pianura; but to do so at this point would be to challenge observation and he resolved instead on despatching him to Monte Alloro with a letter to the old Duke.  As the way to Geneva lay in the opposite direction this would at least give the fugitives a three days’ lead; and they had little cause to fear pursuit from any other quarter.  The convent indeed might raise a hue and cry; but the nuns of Santa Chiara had lately given the devout so much cause for scandal that the abbess would probably be disposed to hush up any fresh delinquency.  The time too was well-chosen; for the sisters had prevailed on the Reverend Mother to celebrate the saint’s day by a masked ball, and the whole convent was engrossed in the invention of whimsical disguises.  The