Suddenly Wyant recalled the question of Doctor Lombard�s maid-servant. Was this the letter she had asked for? Had he been unconsciously carrying it about with him all the afternoon? Who was Count Ottaviano Celsi, and how came Wyant to have been chosen to act as that nobleman�s ambulant letter-box?
Wyant laid his hat and stick on the chapel steps and began to explore his pockets, in the irrational hope of finding there some clue to the mystery; but they held nothing which he had not himself put there, and he was reduced to wondering how the letter, supposing some unknown hand to have bestowed it on him, had happened to fall out while he stood motionless before the picture.
At this point he was disturbed by a step on the floor of the aisle, and turning, he saw his lustrous-eyed neighbor of the table d�hote.
The young man bowed and waved an apologetic hand.
�I do not intrude?� he inquired suavely.
Without waiting for a reply, he mounted the steps of the chapel, glancing about him with the affable air of an afternoon caller.
�I see,� he remarked with a smile, �that you know the hour at which our saint should be visited.�
Wyant agreed that the hour was indeed felicitous.
The stranger stood beamingly before the picture.
�What grace! What poetry!� he murmured, apostrophizing the St. Catherine, but letting his glance slip rapidly about the chapel as he spoke.