“I don’t say I shall succeed,” Ferris answered. “In fact I’ve made one failure already, and I’m pretty well on with a second; but the principle is right, all the same. I don’t expect everybody to see the difference between Don Ippolito and Father O’Brien. At any rate, what I’m going to paint _at_ is the lingering pagan in the man, the renunciation first of the inherited nature, and then of a personality that would have enjoyed the world. I want to show that baffled aspiration, apathetic despair, and rebellious longing which you caten in his face when he’s off his guard, and that suppressed look which is the characteristic expression of all Austrian Venice. Then,” said Ferris laughing, “I must work in that small suspicion of Jesuit which there is in every priest. But it’s quite possible I may make a Father O’Brien of him.” “You won’t make a Don Ippolito of him,” said Florida, after serious consideration of his face to see whether he was quite in earnest, “if you put all that into him. He has the simplest and openest look in the world,” she added warmly, “and there’s neither pagan, nor martyr, nor rebel in it.” Ferris laughed again. “Excuse me; I don’t think you know. I can convince you.”... Florida rose, and looking down the garden path said, “He’s coming;” and as Don Ippolito drew near, his face lighting up with a joyous and innocent smile, she continued absently, “he’s got on new stockings, and a different coat and hat.” The stockings were indeed new and the hat was not the accustomed _nicchio_, but a new silk cylinder with a very worldly, curling brim. Don Ippolito’s coat, also, was of a more mundane cut than the talare; he wore a waistcoat and small-clothes, meeting the stockings at the knee with a sprightly buckle. His person showed no traces of the snuff with which it used to be so plentifully dusted; in fact, he no longer took snuff in the presence of the ladies. The first week he had noted an inexplicable uneasiness in them when he drew forth that blue cotton handkerchief after the solace of a pinch shortly afterwards, being alone with Florida, he saw her give a nervous start at its appearance. He blushed violently, and put it back into the pocket from which he had half drawn it, and whence it never emerged again in her presence. The contessina his former pupil had not shown any aversion to Don Ippolito’s snuff or his blue handkerchief; but then the contessina had never rebuked his finger-nails by the tints of rose and ivory with which Miss Vervain’s hands bewildered him. It was a little droll how anxiously he studied the ways of these Americans, and conformed to them as far as he knew. His English grew rapidly in their society, and it happened sometimes that the only Italian in the day’s lesson was what he read with Florida, for she always yielded to her mother’s wish to talk, and Mrs. Vervain preferred the ease of her native tongue. He was Americanizing in that good lady’s hands as fast as she could transform