"I thought it was," answered Annunziata. "I am sorry it is not." And then she dismissed the subject. "See, it is raining harder. See how the rain comes down in long strings of beads,--see how it is like a network of long strings of glass beads falling through the air. When the rain comes down like that, it means that after the rain stops it will be very hot. To-morrow it will be very hot." The bell in the clock-tower tolled out seven solemn strokes; then the lighter-toned and nimbler-tongued bell of the church began to ring. "Come," peremptorily said Annunziata, jumping up. "Mass." She held out her hand, took John's, and, like a mother, led the meek and unquestioning young man to his duties. II Of course there are no such heretical inventions as pews in the parish church of Sant' Alessina. You sit upon orthodox rush-bottomed chairs, you kneel upon orthodox bare stones. But at the Epistle side of the altar, at an elevation of perhaps a yard from the pavement, there is a recess in the wall, enclosed by a marble balustrade, and hung with faded red curtains, which looks, I'm afraid, a good deal like a private box at a theatre, and is in fact the tribune reserved for the masters of the Castle. (In former days those masters were the Sforzas. So, from this tribune, the members of that race of iron and blood, of fierceness and of guile, have assisted at the mystical sacrifice of the Lamb of God!) Heretofore, during John's residence at the presbytery, the tribune had stood vacant. To-day it was occupied by Maria Dolores and Frau Brandt. Maria Dolores, instead of wearing a hat, had adopted the ancient and beautiful use of draping a long veil of black lace over her dark hair. John knelt in the middle of the church, in the thick of the ragged, dirty, unsavoury villagers. When Mass was over, he returned to the cloisters, and there, face to face, he met the lady of his dreams. She graciously inclined her head. "Good morning," she said, smiling, in a voice that seemed to him full of morning freshness. "Good morning," he responded, wondering whether she could hear the tremor of his heart. "Though, in honest truth, it's rather a bad morning, isn't it?" he submitted, posing his head at an angle, dubious and reflective, that seemed to raise the question to a level of philosophic import. "Oh, with these cloisters, one shouldn't complain," said she, glancing indicatively round. "One can still be out of doors, and yet not get the wetting one deserves. And the view is so fine, and these faded old frescoes are so droll." "Yes," said he, his wits, for the instant, in a state of suspended animation. "The view is fine, the frescoes are droll." She looked as if she were thinking about something. "Don't you find it," she asked, after a moment, with the slightest bepuzzled drawing together of her eyebrows, "a trifle unpleasant, hearing Mass from where you do?" John looked blank. "Unpleasant? No. Why?" he asked.