Will rose hurriedly to greet them. In a moment, he saw something serious was amiss. Philippina’s eyes were red and swollen with crying; Linnet’s, though less bloodshot, looked weary and anxious. “Why, Madre de Dios, what’s the matter?” Florian exclaimed in his affected way, rushing forward effusively in his brown velvet smoking-coat. “My dear Signora, to what happy star do I owe the honour of this unexpected visit? And all unbidden, too! Such good luck is too infrequent!” “It’s poor Philippina!” Linnet cried, half-inarticulate with sympathy. “She’s in such a dreadful state. She really doesn’t know what on earth to do about it.” Florian smiled the calm smile of superior wisdom. “What, already?” he exclaimed, raising one impressive hand. “So soon? So soon? A little rift within the lute, a little tiff with her Theodore? Well, well, dear _Diva_, we know these offences must needs come, in the best regulated families. They’re part and parcel of our ridiculous marriage system. Will and I are wiser in our generation, you see; _we_ keep well out of it.” “No, no; it is not zat!” Philippina cried, excitedly. Then turning to Will, she burst out in German, “I’ve been to see the priest and the bishop to-day, to ask for absolution, and it’s all no use; they’ll neither of them give it to me. I’ve been to ask them again and again these two weeks; but they’re hard like rock; hard, hard, as that mantelpiece: they refuse to forgive me. They say it’s no true marriage at all that I’ve made, but the lusts of the flesh—a sinful union. Ach! what shall I do, what ever shall I do? This is terrible, terrible!” And she wrung her hands hard. “It’ll kill me,” she cried; “it’ll kill me.” Linnet turned in explanation to the bewildered Florian. “You see,” she said simply, “she’s living in sin now, and they won’t absolve her. She may not take the mass, nor receive the sacraments of the Church in any form. She’s like one excommunicated. If she died to-morrow, they would refuse her extreme unction; she would pass away in her sin, and must go at once, straight, straight to perdition.” “But surely,” Florian ventured to observe, turning theologian for once, in these peculiar circumstances, “her present life—well, my dear Signora, without rudeness to the lady, we must all admit, it’s—h’m, h’m—how shall I put it? It’s at least quite as innocent as her previous habits.”