matter where I placed myself, there he was sure to place himself too.
You will suppose that, apart from my annoyance, I was vastly perplexed.
Why should he pursue me so? Who was he? What was he after? And for
enlightenment I addressed myself to Annunziata. 'Who is the hideous old
man who always kneels beside me?' I asked her. She had not noticed any
one kneeling beside me, she said; she had noticed, on the contrary, that
I always knelt alone, at a distance. 'Well,' said I, 'keep your eyes
open to-day, and you will see the man I mean.' So we went to Mass, and
sure enough, no sooner had I found a secluded place, than my old friend
appeared and joined me, dirtier and more hideous and if possible more
deformed than ever.

"Yes?" said Maria Dolores, with interest, as he paused.

"When we came out of church, I asked Annunziata who he was," continued
John. "And she said that though she had kept her eyes open, according to
my injunction, she had failed to see any one kneeling beside me--that,
on the contrary, she had seen me," he concluded, with an insouciance
that was plainly assumed for its dramatic value, "kneeling alone, at a
distance from every one."

Maria Dolores' face was white. She frowned her mystification.

"What!" she exclaimed, in a half-frightened voice.

"That is precisely the ejaculation that fell from my own lips at the
time," said John. "Then I gave her a minute description of the old man,
in all his ugliness. And then she administered my lesson to me."

"Yes? What was it?" questioned Maria Dolores, her interest acute.