“She would—if she could hear me say one word!”
“No doubt you’d cajole her! I’m glad she is where you can’t get at her, poor dear!”
“She was to have been my wife two weeks ago,” said Paul, making a last effort to soften her.
“Well, go home now; she’ll never be your wife this side the grave,” said the old lady, laughing.
“I’ll make all Italy ring with it, madam. This old house shall come down about your ears.”
“Mercy me! We’re not Italians, we’re English. And we’ve got a government protection; it’s a charitable institution.”
“For inveigling people, and getting their money! Miss Bruce, you know, has money.”
“I didn’t know a thing about it—not a thing! Money, has she? Well, Ernestine Wingate does like money; she wants to build a new wing. Look here, young man, Father Ambrose is coming here to-day; you want to see him. He’ll do what’s right, he is a very good man; and he commands all the others; they have to do as he says, whether they like it or not,—I guess you’d better not hurry away.” And, with a nod in which there was almost a wink, the American convert went back down the hall and up the stairway, disappearing through a door which closed with a sharp bang behind her.
Paul crossed the court-yard, and, opening one of the great portals, he passed through, shutting it behind him. Outside, attached to the wall of the villa, there ran a long, low stone bench, crumbling and overgrown with ivy; he sat down here, and remained motionless.
An hour later a carriage drove up, and a priest descended; he was a man of fifty-eight or there-abouts, tall, with a fine bearing and an agreeable face. Paul went up to him, touching his hat as he did so. “Are you going in?”