“It will be an excellent letter, that I don’t doubt for a moment,” said the clergyman; and on this encouragement Mrs. Drainham proceeded to read it, her husband standing behind her, feeling his own pulse, with a benevolent and complacent smile. And indeed the letter was more than excellent, it was eloquent. It appealed to the feelings of the distant aunt in the most touching way. It bade her remember the sister with whom no doubt her own childhood had been passed, and oh! to extend her motherly protection over that dear sister’s orphan child; and it brought forward many religious, as well as natural, arguments to soften the heart of poor Innocent’s nearest relation. In short it was just such a letter as was calculated to bring tears into Mrs. St. John’s eyes, and which drove Mrs. Eastwood half frantic with indignation when she read it. “Does this woman think I am an unnatural wretch, to want all this talking to?” poor Mrs. Eastwood asked, half crying with anger and wounded feeling. But the company in the Casa Piccolomini thought it a beautiful letter. They thought the relations must be hardened indeed if they could resist such an appeal as that. “I am sure the aunt must be a dreadful woman,” said Clara Worsley, “or she would have come by this time. Will you take me to see her to-morrow, dear Mrs. Drainham? After that letter everybody ought to take an interest in her----” “You have expressed all our feelings, my dear,” said Mrs. St. John, pressing the hand of the doctor’s wife with mingled admiration and envy. “I doubt very much if I could have done it half as well.” “Oh, that from you!” said Mrs. Drainham, with enthusiasm, for Mrs. St. John was literary, and the highest authority on matters of style. “But I hear the girl is a very odd girl,” said Miss Bolding. “Doctor, what did her father die of? Are they wrong in their heads? I knew a Vane once, of a West Country family, who were all very queer. I wonder if they were the same Vanes? Devonshire, I think, or Somersetshire, I am not sure which”---- “They are a Devonshire family,” said Dr. Drainham. “And there is nothing wrong about their brains. He died of general break-up, Miss Bolding, a high-tempered man who had lived hard. I have met him about Italy in all sorts of places. The poor girl has been oddly brought up, that is all.” “I fear without any sort of religious training, which accounts for a great deal,” said Mr. St. John. “Not without some sort of religion,” said Miss Maria Bolding. “She is constantly coming over to the little Church of the Spina, the toy church, as my sister calls it. A perfect little gem; I prefer it myself to the Duomo. The girl has good taste, and she is wonderfully pretty. Not the Raphael style perhaps, but just such a face as Leonardo would have given anything for. I called her the Leonardo before I knew who she was.”