She came out of her room very softly, with a faint smile on her face, holding some Prayer-books in her hands. Up to this sad day it had been their custom to read prayers together on the Sundays, being too far off Rome to make it practicable even for the stronger members of the party to go to church. Alice came up to Colin with her books in her hands--she said to him in a wistful whisper, “You will take his place,” and pointed out to him silently the marks she had placed at the lessons and psalms. Then she knelt down between the two awed and astonished men, to say the familiar prayers which only a week ago Arthur himself had read with his dying voice. Though at times articulation was almost impossible to Colin, and Lauderdale breathed out of his deep chest an Amen which sounded like a groan, Alice did not falter in her profound and still devotions. She went over the well-known prayers word by word, with eye and voice steadfast and rapt in the duty which was at the same time a consolation. There are women of such sweet loyalty and submission of spirit, but neither Lauderdale nor Colin had met with them before. Perhaps a certain passiveness of intellect had to do with it, as well as Alice’s steady English training and custom of self-suppression; but it made a wonderful impression upon the two who were now the sole companions and guardians of the friendless young woman, and gave her indeed for the moment an absolute empire over them, of which Alice was altogether unconscious, and of which, even had she known it, she could have made no further use. When the Morning Prayer was almost concluded it was she who indicated to Colin another mark in the Prayer-book, at the prayer for Christ’s Church militant on earth; and they could even hear the whisper of her voice broken by an irrestrainable sob at the thanksgiving for all “Thy servants departed this life in Thy faith and fear,” which Colin read with agitation and faltering. When they rose from their knees, she turned from one to the other with her countenance for the first time disturbed. “You were very very good to him,” she said, softly. “God will bless you for it,” and so sank into sobbing and tears, which were not to be subdued any longer, yet were not passionate nor out of accordance with her docile looks. After that, Alice recovered her calm, and began to occupy herself with them as if she had been their mother. “Have you been out?” she said. “You must not stay in and make yourself ill.” This was addressed specially to Colin. “Please go out and take a walk; it will do you a great deal of good. If it had not have been a great festa it would not have been so bad; but, if you go up to the Villa Conti, you will find nobody there. Go up behind the terrace, into the alleys where it is shady. There is one on the way to the Aldobrandini; you know it, Mr. Campbell. Oh go, please; it is such a beautiful day, it will do you good.”