It was while Mr. Welbourne was sighing and meditating on his own beard and the probable extent of her pecuniary difficulties that Ermengarde, who, with his helping hand had just climbed up among the twisted roots of some pines to the height on which the monastery was built, caught sight of the figure of a stranger. He was pacing the broad and level walk beneath the cypresses, outside the building, where the ridge was highest, and whence the outlook over mountain gorges on one hand and capes and headlands running out to sea on the other was widest and of most varied beauty. It was a tall, thin, black figure in a hooded cloak, with a clean-shaven, ascetic face bent over the book he carried and was perusing with devout interest. "Surely," she said, stopping to rest on the low, crumbling wall by the steps leading on to this plateau--"surely that must be one of the expelled monks, or his ghost, come back to the old home. Reading his breviary." Mr. Welbourne found a seat on the wall beside her, carefully avoiding a geranium-bush, that had grown up to the top among the broken stones, and gave out a delicate scent where Ermengarde's skirt swept it. "No," he said, looking at the studious figure, "it is not a monk. I doubt if the book he is studying with such devout interest is a book of hours--or a psalter." "An interesting type--pale, worn, emaciated, deep-set eyes, a keen, subtle face--the true ascetic type. What stories that face could tell," she mused aloud--"that is, the mouth." "Well, yes; it has told a few thumpers to my certain knowledge. No, it is not a monk, Mrs. Allonby. It is only Mr. Mosson." "You know him? How interesting!" "Oh, everybody knows Mr. Mosson--everybody who has come to grief, that is." "A philanthropist? The modern form of religious enthusiasm--deeds, not words; feeding the hungry instead of saying prayers. A holy materialism." How soon, Mr. Welbourne reflected, misfortune breeds cynicism. It was hardly forty-eight hours since calamity at the tables had befallen this young woman, and she could talk like this. "Should you be in want of money," he continued, "you have merely to name the sum to our ascetic friend, and it is forthcoming. People often want money in these regions, because everybody here is rich. It is only the rich who want money." "Really? Then what on earth do the poor want?" "Oh, lots of things--food, fire, friends, advice, sympathy, clothes, work, but money never." "Really? Then how very, very rich I must be." "Undoubtedly you are. But here comes our friend." They had to stand in the narrow path to let the reverend man pass on his pious way, and, the _déjeuner_ bell having just left off sounding, followed him into the house very shortly after, but at too small a distance to permit further discussion of his virtues--a point much on Mr. Welbourne's conscience at the time, but unfortunately soon driven from his memory by after-events.