priest's face, as he resumed: "I suppose it is the distraction of my
new occupation, and of the new acquaintances--so very strange to me in
every way--that I have made in your amiable country-women, which
hinders me from going about anything in earnest, now that their
munificence has enabled me to pursue my aims with greater advantages
than ever before. But this idle mood will pass, and in the mean time I
am very happy. They are real angels, and madama is a true original."

"Mrs. Vervain is rather peculiar," said the painter, retiring a few
paces from his picture, and quizzing it through his half-closed eyes.
"She is a woman who has had affliction enough to turn a stronger head
than hers could ever have been," he added kindly. "But she has the best
heart in the world. In fact," he burst forth, "she is the most
extraordinary combination of perfect fool and perfect lady I ever saw."

"Excuse me; I don't understand," blankly faltered Don Ippolito.

"No; and I'm afraid I couldn't explain to you," answered Ferris.

There was a silence for a time, broken at last by Don Ippolito, who
asked, "Why do you not marry madamigella?"

He seemed not to feel that there was anything out of the way in the
question, and Ferris was too well used to the childlike directness of
the most maneuvering of races to be surprised. Yet he was displeased,
as he would not have been if Don Ippolito were not a priest. He was not
of the type of priests whom the American knew from the prejudice and
distrust of the Italians; he was alienated from his clerical fellows by
all the objects of his life, and by a reciprocal dislike. About other
priests there were various scandals; but Don Ippolito was like that