conjectured that perhaps her touch of ritualism came from mere love of
any form she could make sure of.

The servants in Mrs. Vervain's lightly ordered household, with the
sympathetic quickness of the Italians, learned to use him as the next
friend of the family, and though they may have had their decorous
surprise at his untrammeled footing, they probably excused the whole
relation as a phase of that foreign eccentricity to which their nation
is so amiable. If they were not able to cast the same mantle of charity
over Don Ippolito's allegiance,--and doubtless they had their reserves
concerning such frankly familiar treatment of so dubious a character as
priest,--still as a priest they stood somewhat in awe of him; they had
the spontaneous loyalty of their race to the people they served, and
they never intimated by a look that they found it strange when Don
Ippolito freely came and went. Mrs. Vervain had quite adopted him into
her family; while her daughter seemed more at ease with him than with
Ferris, and treated him with a grave politeness which had something
also of compassion and of child-like reverence in it. Ferris observed
that she was always particularly careful of his supposable
sensibilities as a Roman Catholic, and that the priest was oddly
indifferent to this deference, as if it would have mattered very little
to him whether his church was spared or not. He had a way of lightly
avoiding, Ferris fancied, not only religious points on which they could
disagree, but all phases of religion as matters of indifference. At
such times Miss Vervain relaxed her reverential attitude, and used him
with something like rebuke, as if it did not please her to have the
representative of even an alien religion slight his office; as if her
respect were for his priesthood and her compassion for him personally.
That was rather hard for Don Ippolito, Ferris thought, and waited to
see him snubbed outright some day, when he should behave without