name. Pinned to her clothes--striped Eastern things, and that kind of
crinkled silk stuff they weave in Crete and Cyprus--was a piece of
parchment, a scapular we thought at first, but which was found to
contain only the name _Dionea_--Dionea, as they pronounce it here.
The question was, Could such a name be fitly borne by a young lady at
the Convent of the Stigmata? Half the population here have names as
unchristian quite--Norma, Odoacer, Archimedes--my housemaid is called
Themis--but Dionea seemed to scandalize every one, perhaps because
these good folk had a mysterious instinct that the name is derived from
Dione, one of the loves of Father Zeus, and mother of no less a lady
than the goddess Venus. The child was very near being called Maria,
although there are already twenty-three other Marias, Mariettas,
Mariuccias, and so forth at the convent. But the sister-bookkeeper, who
apparently detests monotony, bethought her to look out Dionea first in
the Calendar, which proved useless; and then in a big vellum-bound
book, printed at Venice in 1625, called "Flos Sanctorum, or Lives of
the Saints, by Father Ribadeneira, S.J., with the addition of such
Saints as have no assigned place in the Almanack, otherwise called the
Movable or Extravagant Saints." The zeal of Sister Anna Maddalena has
been rewarded, for there, among the Extravagant Saints, sure enough,
with a border of palm-branches and hour-glasses, stands the name of
Saint Dionea, Virgin and Martyr, a lady of Antioch, put to death by the
Emperor Decius. I know your Excellency's taste for historical
information, so I forward this item. But I fear, dear Lady Evelyn, I
fear that the heavenly patroness of your little sea-waif was a much
more extravagant saint than that.

_December 21, 1879._

Many thanks, dear Donna Evelina, for the money for Dionea's schooling.