Craig had no suspicion, and was delighted to find one person in so perfect accord with himself. He motioned her to go on, and, pleased with the attention she was receiving, she went on rapidly now and a little incoherently, as her memory was beginning to fail her. “I think,” she said, “that some writers have accused him of eloping with another man’s wife. This is doubtful. There is a Palma, who figures very conspicuously with him. I can’t tell you all about it, or just how he died. I know Dante met him in Purgatory with those who had died without a chance to repent.” “Served him right, too, for running off with another man’s wife. Has he ever got out of Purgatory?” Uncle Zach exclaimed, and Helen blessed him for creating a diversion at a point from which she dared not venture much farther. Everybody laughed except Mrs. Taylor, who had caught a whiff of burning jelly and arose hastily, saying she must be excused. “Come back, Dot, as quick as you can; it won’t do to lose none of this feast of——, what do you call it?” Uncle Zach said to her, putting his hand on her chair as if to keep it from some imaginary claimant. Dot did not answer, nor did she come back. “I think I’ve done my part,” Helen said, but as Craig urged her to go on she continued, with an air of superior wisdom, “As to the much-abused poem, it was written, I suppose, to show the times in which Sordello lived, and is in some sense the history of the development of a great soul. It is the most obscure of all Mr. Browning’s poems, and is like a beautiful palace without a staircase; so if one would reach the rooms on the second floor, he must climb.” “Bravo! Miss Tracy. That is a most original idea, and you have described it exactly,” Craig cried, enthusiastically. He evidently had not studied the encyclopedia as she had, and was giving Helen credit for an originality of thought she did not possess. The absence of a staircase had struck her forcibly, and she remembered and repeated it, and, flushed with success, ventured out into waters which proved too deep for her. Why commit portions of Sordello, if she did not use them? she thought. “It is a grand poem, with so many fine passages,” she said, and began to repeat portions of it, but became confused, and strung together parts of sentences in two or three different books, making a medley at which even Craig looked perplexed, wondering where such passages occurred, while Mark disappeared around the corner to hide his merriment. It was his face which told Helen of her blunder, but she was equal to it. With a gay laugh she said, “I’ve made a horrid mistake, I guess, and jumbled things some, but have done the best I could. Now I’ll give place to the master.”