“Ah! I do not deny it,” laughed the broad-faced, easy-going man, now again seated in his rush-bottomed chair. “I know your hotels in London—the Savoy, the Carlton, the Ritz, and the Berkeley. I’ve lunched and dined and supped at them all. I’ve shopped in Bond Street, and I’ve lost money at Ascot. Oh, yes!” he laughed. “I know your wonderful London! And now I have nothing in the world—not a soldo of my own. I am simply a Brother—and I am content,” he said, with a strange look of peace and resignation.
We who live outside the high monastery walls can never understand the delightful, old-world peace that reigns within—that big family of whom the father is the fat Priore, always indulgent and kind to his grown-up children, yet so very severe upon any broken rule.
Fra Pacifico had that evening told me something which had placed me very much upon the alert. I had not been mistaken when I suspected that he might know something of the woman Yolanda Romanelli—the woman whom Rayne had sent me to inquire about—and I felt that I had done well to first inquire of my old friend. He had hinted certain things concerning the Marchesa, the gay leader of society in Rome, whose name was in the Tribuna almost daily, and whose husband possessed a fine old palazzo in the Corso, as well as an official residence in Naples, where, in addition to being one of the most popular men in Italy, he was Admiral of the Port.
“May I be forgiven for uttering those ill-words,” exclaimed the monk, as though speaking to himself. “We are taught to forgive our enemies. But I cannot forgive her!”
“Why?” I asked.
“She has desecrated the house of God,” he replied in a low tense voice.
Two hours later I was back with Lola and Madame Duperré at the Hôtel Victoria at Pisa.
Coming from the lips of any other than those of Fra Pacifico I should have suspected that the Marchesa Romanelli had once done him some evil turn. Yet when a man renounces the world and enters the cloisters, he puts aside all jealousies and thought of injury, and lives a life of devotion and of strictest piety. Fra Pacifico was a man I much admired, and whose word I accepted without query.
Next day Lola was inquisitive as to my visit to the monastery, but I was compelled to keep my own counsel, and that evening we all three took the night express to Rome, arriving at the Grand at nine o’clock after a dusty and sleepless journey, for the wagons-lit which run over the Maremma marshes roll and rock until sleep becomes quite impossible.