"Oh," said John, laughing, while the pink of his skin deepened a shade. "She mentioned that, did she? I'm glad if you don't feel that I took a good deal upon myself. But she had just told the same parable to me, and it seemed a pity it shouldn't have a larger audience." Then, after a few more paces taken again in silence, "What a marvellous little person she is, Annunziata!" said Maria Dolores. "She's to a marvellous degree the right product of her milieu," said John. Maria Dolores did not speak, but her eyes questioned, "Yes? How do you mean?" "I mean that she's a true child of the presbytery," he replied, "and at the same time a true child of this Italy, where Paganism has never perfectly died. She has been carefully instructed in her catechism, and she has fed upon pious legends, she has breathed an ecclesiastical atmosphere, until the things of the Church have become a part of her very bone. She sees everything in relation to them, translates everything in terms of them. But at the same time odd streaks of Paganism survive in her. They survive a little--don't they?--in all Italians. Wherever she goes her eye reads omens. She will cast your fortune for you with olive-stones. The woods are peopled for her by fauns and dryads. When she takes her walks abroad, I've no doubt, she catches glimpses of Proteus rising from the lake, and hears old Triton blow his wreathed horn." Maria Dolores looked interested. "Yes," she said, slowly, thoughtfully, and meditated for an interval. By-and-by, "You know," she recommenced, "she's a sort of little person about whom one can't help feeling rather frightened." And her eyes looked to his for sympathetic understanding. But his were interrogative. "No? Why should one feel frightened about her?" "Oh," said Maria Dolores, with a movement, "it isn't exactly easy to tell why. One's fears are vague. But--well, for one thing, she thinks so much about Death. Death and what comes after,--they interest her so much. It doesn't seem natural, it makes one uneasy. And then she's so delicate-looking. Sometimes she's almost transparent. In every way she is too serious. She uses her mind too much, and her body too little. She ought to have more of the gaiety of childhood, she ought to have other children to romp with. She's too much like a disembodied spirit. It all alarms one." John, as she spoke, frowned, pondering. When she had done, his frown cleared, he shook his head.