"Ah, ah!" she said, pausing, after she was dressed, and addressing a
coarse print of Saint Agnes pasted against the wall,--"you look very
meek there, and it was a great thing no doubt to die as you did; but if
you'd lived to be married and bring up a family of girls, you'd have
known something greater. Please, don't take offence with a poor old
woman who has got into the way of speaking her mind freely! I'm foolish,
and don't know much,--so, dear lady, pray for me!" And old Elsie bent
her knee and crossed herself reverently, and then went out, leaving her
young charge still sleeping.

It was yet dusky dawn when she might have been seen kneeling, with her
sharp, clear-cut profile, at the grate of a confession-box in a church
in Sorrento. Within was seated a personage who will have some influence
on our story, and who must therefore be somewhat minutely introduced to
the reader.

Il Padre Francesco had only within the last year arrived in the
neighborhood, having been sent as superior of a brotherhood of
Capuchins, whose convent was perched on a crag in the vicinity. With
this situation came a pastoral care of the district; and Elsie and her
grand-daughter found in him a spiritual pastor very different from the
fat, jolly, easy Brother Girolamo, to whose place he had been appointed.
The latter had been one of those numerous priests taken from the
peasantry, who never rise above the average level of thought of the body
from which they are drawn. Easy, gossipy, fond of good living and good
stories, sympathetic in troubles and in joys, he had been a general
favorite in the neighborhood, without exerting any particularly
spiritualizing influence.