liked to praise and to give pleasure. It was not wonderful indeed that the
child's fancy had been touched. That thrilling, passionate voice--her own
difficulty always was to resist it--to try and see straight in spite of it.

* * * * *

Later that evening, when Miss Foster had withdrawn, Manisty and Mrs.
Burgoyne were lingering and talking on a stone balcony that ran along the
eastern front of the villa. The Campagna and the sea were behind them.
Here, beyond a stretch of formal garden, rose a curved front of wall with
statues and plashing water showing dimly in the moonlight; and beyond the
wall there was a space of blue and silver lake; and girdling the lake the
forest-covered Monte Cavo rose towering into the moonlit sky, just showing
on its topmost peak that white speck which once was the temple of the
Latian Jupiter, and is now, alas! only the monument of an Englishman's
crime against history, art, and Rome. The air was soft, and perfumed with
scent from the roses in the side-alleys below. A monotonous bird-note came
from the ilex darkness, like the note of a thin passing bell. It was the
cry of a small owl, which, in its plaintiveness and changelessness, had
often seemed to Manisty and Eleanor the very voice of the Roman night.

Suddenly Mrs. Burgoyne said--'I have a different version of your Nemi story
running in my head!--more tragic than yours. My priest is no murderer. He
found his predecessor dead under the tree; the place was empty; he took it.
He won't escape his own doom, of course, but he has not deserved it. There
is no blood on his hand--his heart is pure. There!--I imagine it so.'

There was a curious tremor in her voice, which Manisty, lost in his own
thoughts, did not detect. He smiled.