She had thrown off her hat a little while before, and now she took it up, and straightened the loops of ribbon with a nervous touch here and there, and then put the hat on again, and arranged the gossamer veil, which she hoped might hide her swollen eyelids and tear-stained cheeks. “If Martin should come to meet me, what will he think? she said piteously. “Let me go with you, and I may be able to distract his attention--if you don’t want him to see that you have been crying.” “No, no. He must not see. He would wonder, and question me--and guess, perhaps--as you did just now. How was it you knew--what made you guess?” she asked, with a sense of rebellion against this man who had pierced the veil behind which she had been hiding herself so long. “I saw your sorrow; and I knew that there could scarcely be so deep a sorrow if there were no memory of sin. Will you take my arm down this steep path?” “No, thank you. I know every step. I could walk about this place in my sleep. You have been cruel to me, Father Rodwell, very cruel. Promise me one thing by way of atonement for your cruelty. Promise me that if I die in Rome I shall be buried in this place, and as near Shelley’s grave as they can find room to lay me.” “I promise. Yes, it is a sweet spot, is it not? It was down yonder in the old burial-ground that Shelley looked upon the grave of Keats, and said it was a spot to make one in love with death. But I would not have you think yourself doomed to an early death, Mrs. Disney. Have you never read in the ‘Lives of the Saints’ how some who were on the point of death have revived at the touch of the holy oil, and have lived and have renewed their strength, and re-entered the world to lead a holier and nobler life than they had led before? Who knows if you were to confess your sin, and patiently suffer whatever penance you were called upon to bear, new vistas might not open for you? There is more than one way of being happy in this world. If you could never again know the sweetness of a domestic life--as trusted wife and happy mother--there are other and wider lives in which you would count your children and your sisters by hundreds. There are sisterhoods in which your future might be full of usefulness and full of peace. Or if you had no vocation for that wider life, it might be that touched by your helplessness in the past, and your remorse in the present, your husband might find it in his heart to forgive that bygone sin, and still to cherish, and still to hold you dear.”