Jack had understood for some time that between these two women there was a secret. He loved them both: Zénaïde won his respect and his admiration, while Madame Rondic, more elegant and more carefully dressed, seemed to be a remnant of the refinements of his former life. He fancied that she was like his mother; and yet Ida was lively, gay, and talkative, while Madame Rondic was always languid and silent. They had not a feature alike, nor was there any similarity in the color of their hair. Nevertheless, they did resemble each other, but it was a resemblance as vague and indefinite as would result from the same perfume among the clothing, or of something more subtile still, which only a skilful chemist of the human soul could have analyzed. Sometimes on Sunday, Jack read aloud to the two women and to Rondic. The parlor was the room in which they assembled on these occasions. The apartment was decorated with a highly colored view of Naples, some enormous shells, vitrified sponges, and all those foreign curiosities which their vicinity to the sea seemed naturally to bring to them. Handmade lace trimmed the curtains, and a sofa and an arm-chair of plush made up the furniture of the apartment. In the arm-chair Father Rondic took his seat to listen to the reading, while Clarisse sat in her usual place at the window, idly looking out. Zénaïde profited by her one day at home to mend the house-hold linen, disregarding the fact of the day being Sunday. Among the books given to Jack by Dr. Rivals was Dante’s _Inferno_. The book fascinated the child, for it described a spectacle that he had constantly before his eyes. Those half naked human forms, those flames, those deep ditches of molten metal, all seemed to him one of the circles of which the poet wrote. One Sunday he was reading to his usual audience from his favorite book; Father Rondic was asleep, according to his ordinary custom, but the two women listened with fixed attention. It was the episode of Francesca da Rimini. Clarisse bowed her head and shuddered. Zénaïde frowned until her heavy eyebrows met, and drove her needle through her work with mad zeal. Those grand sonorous lines filled the humble roof with music. Tears stood in the eyes of Clarisse as she listened. Without noticing them, Zenaïde spoke abruptly as the voice of the reader ceased. “What a wicked, impudent woman,” she cried, “not only to relate her crime, but to boast of it!” “It is true that she was guilty,” said Clarisse, “but she was also very unhappy.” “Unhappy! Don’t say that, mamma; one would think that you pitied this Francesca.” “And why should I not, my child? She loved him before her marriage, and she was driven to espouse a man whom she did not love.”