Now, he could spring forward and throw himself at her feet, but alas! as he reached her, the figure melted into the moonlight, and she was gone—that divine Theodora, who, let us hope, returned at last to those Elysian fields she so well deserved. CHAPTER 70 “They have overdone it, Gertrude, with Lothair,” said Lord Jerome to his wife. “I spoke to Monsignore Catesby about it some time ago, but he would not listen to me; I had more confidence in the cardinal and am disappointed; but a priest is ever too hot. His nervous system has been tried too much.” Lady St. Jerome still hoped the best, and believed in it. She was prepared to accept the way Lothair was found senseless in the Coliseum as a continuance of miraculous interpositions. He might have remained there for a day or days, and never have been recognized when discovered. How marvelously providential that Father Coleman should have been in the vicinity, and tempted to visit the great ruin that very night! Lord St. Jerome was devout, and easy in his temper. Priests and women seemed to have no difficulty in managing him. But he was an English gentleman, and there was at the bottom of his character a fund of courage, firmness, and commonsense, that sometimes startled and sometimes perplexed those who assumed that he could be easily controlled. He was not satisfied with the condition of Lothair, “a peer of England and my connection;” and he had not unlimited confidence in those who had been hitherto consulted as to his state. There was a celebrated English physician at that time visiting Rome, and Lord St. Jerome, notwithstanding the multiform resistance of Monsignors Catesby, insisted he should be called in to Lothair. The English physician was one of those men who abhor priests, and do not particularly admire ladies. The latter, in revenge, denounced his manners as brutal, though they always sent for him, and were always trying, though vainly, to pique him into sympathy. He rarely spoke, but he listened to every one with entire patience. He sometimes asked a question, but he never made a remark.