“Indeed, you are not disturbing me at all. I have been trying to continue a letter which I began to my brother a month ago. There is no hurry about it.” “And how is Paolo?” “I have not heard for some time. I ought to hear soon. He went to America last summer, and I have not had a word from him since. My letter is of no importance, I assure you, and now, since you are here, you shall not go. Indeed, I only touched it a minute ago. I have been looking at some pictures till I am so begrimed and inundated with dust that I feel as though I had been resolved into my original element.” And she held up her hands with a pretty gesture of horror. Despard looked at her for a moment as she stood in her bright beauty before him. A sudden expression of pain flashed over his face, succeeded by his usual smile. “Dust never before took so fair a form,” he said, and sat down, looking on the floor. “For unfailing power of compliment, for an unending supply of neat and pretty speeches, commend me to the Rev. Courtenay Despard.” “Yet, singularly enough, no one else ever dreamed that of me.” “You were always so.” “With you.” “In the old days.” “Now lost forever.” Their voices sank low and expressive of a deep melancholy. A silence followed. Despard at last, with a sudden effort, began talking in his usual extravagant strain about badgers till at last Mrs. Thornton began to laugh, and the radiancy of their spirits was restored. “Strange,” said he, taking up a prayer-book with a peculiar binding, on which there was a curiously intertwisted figure in gilt. “That pattern has been in my thoughts and dreams for a week.” “How so?” “Why, I saw it in your hands last Sunday, and my eyes were drawn to it till its whole figure seemed to stamp itself on my mind. See! I can trace it from memory.” And, taking his cane, he traced the curiously involved figure on the carpet. “And were your thoughts fixed on nothing better than that?” “I was engaged in worship,” was the reply, with marked emphasis. “I must take another book next time.” “Do not. You will only force me to study another pattern.” Mrs. Thornton laughed lightly, and Despard looked at her with a smile. “I’m afraid your thoughts wander,” she said, lightly, “as mine do. There is no excuse for you. There is for me. For you know I’m like Naaman; I have to bow my head in the temple of Baal. After all,” she continued, in a more serious voice, “I suppose I shall be able some day to worship before my own altar, for, do you know, I expect to end my days in a convent.” “And why?” “For the purpose of perfect religious seclusion.” Despard looked at her earnestly for a moment. Then his usual smile broke out. “Wherever you go let me know, and I’ll take up my abode outside the walls and come and look at you every day through the grating.” “And would that be a help to a religious life?”