Father Cristoforo was not without visitings of the same sort of feeling; but he allowed no trace of such soft-heartedness to appear as he put Dino through a searching examination concerning the way in which he had spent his time in England. Dino answered his questions fully and clearly: he had nothing that he wished to hide. Even the Prior could not accuse him of a wish to excuse himself. He told the story of his interview with Hugo, of the dinner, of Hugo's attack upon him, and of his sojourn in the hospital, where Brian had sought him out and convinced him (without knowing that he was doing so) of his innocence with respect to Hugo's plot. Then came the story of his intercourse with Brian, his discovery that Brian's happiness hinged upon his love for Elizabeth Murray, and his attempts to unravel the very tangled skein of his friend's fortunes. Mr. Brett's opinion of the case, Brian's letter to Mrs. Luttrell, Dino's own visit to Scotland, with its varied effects, including the final destruction of the papers--all this was quietly and fully detailed, with an occasional interruption only from Padre Cristoforo in the shape of a question or a muttered comment. And when the whole story was told the Prior spoke. Everything that Dino had done was, of course, wrong. He ought never to have seen Hugo, or dined with him: he ought to have gone to Father Connolly, the priest to whose care he had been recommended, as soon as he came out of hospital: he ought never to have interfered in Brian's love affairs, nor gone to Scotland, nor sought to impose conditions on Mrs. Luttrell, nor, in short, done any of the thousand and one things that he had done. As for the destruction of the papers, it was a point on which he (Father Cristoforo) hardly dared, he said, with a shrug of his shoulders, to touch. The base ingratitude, the unfaithfulness to the interests of the Church, the presumption, the pride, the wilfulness, manifested in that action, transcended all his powers of reprobation. The matter must be referred to a higher authority than his. And so forth. And every word he said was like a dagger planted in Dino's breast. As for his desire to be a monk, the Prior repudiated the notion with contempt. Dino Vasari a monk, after this lapse from obedience and humility? He was not fit to do the humblest work of the lowest servant of those who lived by the altar. He had not even shown common penitence for his sin. Let him do that: let him humble himself: let him sit in dust and ashes, metaphorically speaking: and then, by-and-bye, the Church might open her arms to him, and listen to the voice of his prayer. But now--Father Cristoforo declined even to hear any formal confession: his pupil must wait and prepare himself, before he was fit for the sacrament of penance.