At a window which opened to the ground--and from which a view of the garden, and beyond the garden the rich woods of the Borghese Villa, and beyond these again, the massive dome of St. Peter's, extended--sat two ladies, so wonderfully alike that a mere glance would have proclaimed them to be sisters. It is true the Countess Balderoni was several years older than Lady Augusta Bramleigh; but whether from temperament or the easier flow of an Italian life in comparison with the more wearing excitement of an English existence, she certainly looked little, if anything, her senior. They were both handsome,--at least, they had that character of good looks which in Italy is deemed beauty; they were singularly fair, with large, deep-set blue-gray eyes, and light brown hair of a marvellous abundance and silkiest fibre. They were alike soft-voiced and gentle-mannered, and alike strong-willed and obstinate, of an intense selfishness, and very capricious. “His eminence is late this evening,” said Lady Augusta, looking at her watch. “It is nigh eight o'clock.” “I fancy, Gusta, he was not quite pleased with you last night. On going away he said something, I did n't exactly catch it, but it sounded like 'leggierezza;' he thought you had not treated his legends of St. Francis with becoming seriousness.” “If he wanted me to be grave he oughtn't to tell me funny stories.” “The lives of the saints, Gusta!” “Well, dearest, that scene in the forest where St. Francis asked the devil to flog him, and not to desist, even though he should be weak enough to implore it--was n't that dialogue as droll as anything in Boccaccio?” “It's not decent, it's not decorous to laugh at any incident in the lives of holy men.” “Holy men, then, should never be funny, at least when they are presented to me, for it's always the absurd side of everything has the greatest attraction for me.” “This is certainly not the spirit which will lead you to the Church!” “But I thought I told you already, dearest, that it 's the road I like, not the end of the journey. Courtship is confessedly better than marriage, and the being converted is infinitely nicer than the state of conviction.” “Oh, Gusta, what are you saying?” “Saying what I most fervently feel to be true. Don't you know, better even than myself, that it is the zeal to rescue me from the fold of the heretics surrounds me every evening with monsignori and vescovi, and attracts to the sofa where I happen to sit, purple stockings and red, a class of adorers, I am free to own, there is nothing in the lay world to compare with; and don't you know, too, that the work of conversion accomplished, these seductive saints will be on the look-out for a new sinner?” “And is this the sincerity in which you profess your new faith? is it thus that you mean to endow a new edifice to the honor of the Holy Religion?”