It was at the dinner-table of an earl that the monk perceived most sharply the contrast between his inward and his outward life. While he was donning in his room the fine clothes with which Mr. Crowberry had equipped him for the journey, he had been suddenly filled with such a sense of God's love and presence as he had never known before. Throughout the lively dinner, although he took his due part in conversation, this ecstasy endured. He seemed to be two persons in one body. Across the table he could see himself reflected in the beveled mirror of a vast mahogany sideboard. At closer quarters the mirror reflected the butler solemnly pouring champagne into tall French flutes of purest silver. In the back of the picture, brilliantly lit by many candles, Antonio could see his own reflection. He thought of the Antonio in flapping clothes who had lived for weeks in Oporto on salt fish and dark bread so that he might repay the cura's loan, and he compared him with the new Antonio, in broadcloth and fine linen. On his left sat the earl's niece, a magnificent young dame with a rope of pearls round her neck and a diamond tiara in her hair. According to a custom of Puritan England, which has always bewildered visitors from less prudish countries, she was dining in a kind of ball-dress which revealed arms and shoulders as white and shapely as a statue's. All the themes of the talk were of the world, worldly: but Antonio's whole heart remained in heaven. Not that he was always indifferent to the charms and graces of beautiful women. On the contrary, he was generally at his best in their presence. And women, in their turn, were enchanted with Antonio, Indeed, one self-willed beauty concealed so little of her admiration for the handsome and courtly Southerner that during a tour of the greenhouses she plucked a flower which he had admired and placed it in his hand. Her look, as she did so, had meanings: but Antonio was not a gawk, and he received the keepsake with such easy tact that the affair would have ended had not the inquisitive Crowberry caught the lady's eye. From that day forward he hardly ceased rallying Antonio on his conquest. Having heard that, in Portugal, a commoner shares the title of the Duchess he marries, Mr. Crowberry began to call Antonio "Your Grace" and to paint lurid pictures of the frightful revenge shortly to be wreaked by Antonio's jilted Teresa.