It was in the porch of the basilica, as the congregation dispersed, that the family of the Aventine first met again. When they reached the gardens of the palace, and sat in the shade of the ilexes, there was much to hear and tell. From Ireland the tidings were full of joy. The Irish chieftain, on hearing of the welcome of his son and daughter in the Christian household at Rome, had laid aside his last faint hesitation as to embracing Christianity, and had been baptized by Patrick at the great Easter Baptism. He and his wife welcomed Lucia to their hearts and kingdom; they trusted to receive her as a daughter in the place of the daughter they were willing to give as a bride to Marius, however sore the parting might be to them. They only stipulated that, as soon as might be in those perilous days, the four might come back to Ireland; Baithene and Lucia to remain as the joy of their home, and the stay and strength of the clan; and Ethne and Marius to sojourn there as long as they could be spared from their Roman home. Also they desired that Baithene should for a time take a fair dwelling of his own in Rome, to receive his sister there, that she might be led thence, as became a lady of free and noble birth, to the house of her bridegroom. And they consented, they even generously wished, for the sake of their own country and people, that Baithene and Lucia should remain a year or two in Rome, that he might bring home to their far-off Ireland the learning and training of that great city, which they understood to have been so long the centre of the world’s greatness and wisdom, and the channel of Divine wisdom and order to the Christian Church. Thus in the midst of that tumultuous, tormented age, began one of those quiet melodies of love and rest which are always flowing on in soft musical tones through the din of storms and wars, scarcely heard at all in the great orchestral chorus of history, yet without which the world itself, and therefore its history, would soon fall back into chaos and cease to be.