“Pray proceed with your talk,” I said. “I have something here to amuse me, till you have done.”
So I sat reading, or pretending to read. I did not even glance up, but I felt that they were looking uneasily at one another. There was a long pause. At last I lifted my eyes.
“I’m sure I’m in the way,” I said; and rose as if to go.
“No, no!” cried Ellen, more and more uneasy at my manner, which I’m afraid was ominous. “We were only discussing some foolish village matters, on which Mr. Santley wished to have my advice.”
“Very well,” I replied. Then, turning to Santley, I inquired quietly, “Do you read Spanish?”
He shook his head.
“That’s a pity,” I continued. “Otherwise, you might have been much amused by this little work, written by a priest like yourself, though not quite of your persuasion.”
“Is it a tale?” asked Ellen, bending over me.
“Yes; one of old Sebastiano’s ‘Tales in Verse.’ Its author, I may tell you, was a Castilian monk, who abandoned the Church for the heretical pursuit of story-writing, and took ‘Sebastiano’ as a pseudonym. The story I am reading here is considered, by many, his masterpiece. The verse is assonantic throughout, the subject——”
Here my satyr could not forbear a gesture of impatience and irritation.