“How strange that I cannot make him understand!” said Agnes, when he was gone.  “I must have sinned, I must have done wrong; but I have been trying all the while to do right.  Why would he stay so and look at me so with those deep eyes?  I was very hard with him,—­very!  I trembled for him, I was so severe; and yet it has not discouraged him enough.  How strange that he would call me so, after all, when I explained to him I never could marry!—­Must I tell all this to Father Francesco?  How dreadful!  How he looked at me before!  How he trembled and turned away from me!  What will he think now?  Ah, me! why must I tell him?  If I could only confess to my mother Theresa, that would be easier.  We have a mother in heaven to hear us; why should we not have a mother on earth?  Father Francesco frightens me so!  His eyes burn me!  They seem to burn into my soul, and he seems angry with me sometimes, and sometimes looks at me so strangely!  Dear, blessed Mother,” she said, kneeling at the shrine, “help thy little child!  I do not want to do wrong:  I want to do right.  Oh that I could come and live with thee!”

Poor Agnes! a new experience had opened in her heretofore tranquil life, and her day was one of conflict.  Do what she would, the words that had been spoken to her in the morning would return to her mind, and sometimes she awoke with a shock of guilty surprise at finding she had been dreaming over what the cavalier said to her of living with him alone, in some clear, high, purple solitude of those beautiful mountains which she remembered as an enchanted dream of her childhood.  Would he really always love her, then, always go with her to prayers and mass and sacrament, and be reconciled to the Church, and should she indeed have the joy of feeling that this noble soul was led back to heavenly peace through her?  Was not this better than a barren life of hymns and prayers in a cold convent?  Then the very voice that said these words, that voice of veiled strength and manly daring, that spoke with such a gentle pleading, and yet such an undertone of authority, as if he had a right to claim her for himself,—­she seemed to feel the tones of that voice in every nerve;—­and then the strange thrilling pleasure of thinking that he loved her so.  Why should he, this strange, beautiful knight?  Doubtless he had seen splendid high-born ladies,—­he had seen even queens and princesses,—­and what could he find to like in her, a poor little peasant?  Nobody ever thought so much of her before, and he was so unhappy without her;—­it was strange he should be; but he said so, and it must be true.  After all, Father Francesco might be mistaken about his being wicked.  On the whole, she felt sure he was mistaken, at least in part.  Uncle Antonio did not seem to be so much shocked at what she told him; he knew the temptations of men better, perhaps, because he did not stay shut up in one convent, but travelled all about, preaching and teaching.