The priest took her offered hand, and looked at her in astonishment.
'Yes—I remember—you were with Miss Manisty.'
'I wish you had asked me to come with you this morning,' cried the girl suddenly. 'I'd have helped you carry that parcel up the hill. It was too much for you in the heat.'
Her face expressed the sweetest, most passionate sympathy, the indignant homage of youth to old age unjustly wounded and forsaken. Eleanor was no less surprised than Father Benecke. Was this the stiff, the reticent Lucy?
The priest struggled for composure, and smiled as he withdrew his hand.
'You would have found it a long way, Signorina. I tried to get a boy at
Selvapendente, but no one would serve me.'
He paused a moment, then resumed speaking with a sort of passionate reluctance, his eyes upon the ground.
'I am a suspended priest—and the Bishop of Orvieto has notified the fact to his clergy. The news was soon known through the whole district. And now it seems the people hate me. They will do nothing for me. Nay, if they could, they would willingly do me an injury.'
The flush had died out of the old cheeks. He stood bareheaded before them, the tonsure showing plainly amid his still thick white locks—the delicate face and hair, like a study in ivory and silver, thrown out against the deep shadows of the Sassetto.
'Father, won't you sit down and tell me about it all?' said Eleanor gently.
'You didn't send me away, you know—the other day—at the villa.'