that she might at will descend and kneel by the coffin. This was matter of
edification to all the household and should have been peculiarly pleasing
to the chaplain; but, with respect to you, he was the kind of man who
brings a sour mouth to the eating of the sweetest apple.

"However that may be, the Duchess, when she dismissed him, was seen running
to the garden, where she talked earnestly with the boy Antonio about the
new clove-carnations; and the rest of the day she sat indoors and played
sweetly on the virginal. Now Nencia always had it in mind that her grace
had made a mistake in refusing that request of the chaplain's; but she said
nothing, for to talk reason to the Duchess was of no more use than praying
for rain in a drought.

"Winter came early that year, there was snow on the hills by All Souls,
the wind stripped the gardens, and the lemon-trees were nipped in the
lemon-house. The Duchess kept her room in this black season, sitting over
the fire, embroidering, reading books of devotion (which was a thing she
had never done) and praying frequently in the chapel. As for the chaplain,
it was a place he never set foot in but to say mass in the morning,
with the Duchess overhead in the tribune, and the servants aching with
rheumatism on the marble floor. The chaplain himself hated the cold, and
galloped through the mass like a man with witches after him. The rest of
the day he spent in his library, over a brazier, with his eternal books....

"You'll wonder, sir, if I'm ever to get to the gist of the story; and I've
gone slowly, I own, for fear of what's coming. Well, the winter was long
and hard. When it fell cold the Duke ceased to come out from Vicenza,
and not a soul had the Duchess to speak to but her maid-servants and the
gardeners about the place. Yet it was wonderful, my grandmother said, how
she kept her brave colors and her spirits; only it was remarked that she