mean?"

"I mean that she's a true child of the presbytery," he replied, "and at
the same time a true child of this Italy, where Paganism has never
perfectly died. She has been carefully instructed in her catechism, and
she has fed upon pious legends, she has breathed an ecclesiastical
atmosphere, until the things of the Church have become a part of her
very bone. She sees everything in relation to them, translates
everything in terms of them. But at the same time odd streaks of
Paganism survive in her. They survive a little--don't they?--in all
Italians. Wherever she goes her eye reads omens. She will cast your
fortune for you with olive-stones. The woods are peopled for her by
fauns and dryads. When she takes her walks abroad, I've no doubt, she
catches glimpses of Proteus rising from the lake, and hears old Triton
blow his wreathed horn."

Maria Dolores looked interested.

"Yes," she said, slowly, thoughtfully, and meditated for an interval.
By-and-by, "You know," she recommenced, "she's a sort of little person
about whom one can't help feeling rather frightened." And her eyes
looked to his for sympathetic understanding.

But his were interrogative. "No? Why should one feel frightened about
her?"

"Oh," said Maria Dolores, with a movement, "it isn't exactly easy to
tell why. One's fears are vague. But--well, for one thing, she thinks so
much about Death. Death and what comes after,--they interest her so
much. It doesn't seem natural, it makes one uneasy. And then she's so