She resolved to tell this to Father Francesco.  Perhaps he would——­No,—­she shivered as she remembered the severe, withering look with which the holy father had spoken of him, and the awfulness of his manner,—­he would never consent.  And then her grandmother——­No, there was no possibility.

Meanwhile Agnes’s good old uncle sat in the orange-shaded garden, busily perfecting his sketches; but his mind was distracted, and his thoughts wandered,—­and often he rose, and, leaving his drawings, would pace up and down the little place, absorbed in earnest prayer.  The thought of his master’s position was hourly growing upon him.  The real world with its hungry and angry tide was each hour washing higher and higher up on the airy shore of the ideal, and bearing the pearls and enchanted shells of fancy out into its salt and muddy waters.

“Oh, my master, my father!” he said, “is the martyr’s crown of fire indeed waiting thee?  Will God desert His own?  But was not Christ crucified?—­and the disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord.  But surely Florence will not consent.  The whole city will make a stand for him;—­they are ready, if need be, to pluck out their eyes and give them to him.  Florence will certainly be a refuge for him.  But why do I put confidence in man?  In the Lord alone have I righteousness and strength.”

And the old monk raised the psalm, “Quare fremunt gentes,” and his voice rose and fell through the flowery recesses and dripping grottoes of the old gorge, sad and earnest like the protest of the few and feeble of Christ’s own against the rushing legions of the world.  Yet, as he sang, courage and holy hope came into his soul from the sacred words,—­just such courage as they afterwards brought to Luther, and to the Puritans in later times.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE MONK’S DEPARTURE.

The three inhabitants of the little dovecot were sitting in their garden after supper, enjoying the cool freshness.  The place was perfumed with the smell of orange-blossoms, brought out by gentle showers that had fallen during the latter part of the afternoon, and all three felt the tranquillizing effects of the sweet evening air.  The monk sat bending over his drawings, resting the frame on which they lay on the mossy garden-wall, so as to get the latest advantage of the rich golden twilight which now twinkled through the sky.  Agnes sat by him on the same wall,—­now glancing over his shoulder at his work, and now leaning thoughtfully on her elbow, gazing pensively down into the deep shadows of the gorge, or out where the golden light of evening streamed under the arches of the old Roman bridge, to the wide, bright sea beyond.

Old Elsie bustled about with unusual content in the lines of her keen wrinkled face.  Already her thoughts were running on household furnishing and bridal finery.  She unlocked an old chest which from its heavy quaint carvings of dark wood must have been some relic of the fortunes of her better days, and, taking out of a little till of the same a string of fine silvery pearls, held them up admiringly to the evening light.  A splendid pair of pearl ear-rings also was produced from the same receptacle.