“Why, my child?”

“I wanted to ask him when and how I could get speech with our dear Father the Pope,—­for there is somewhat on my mind that I would lay before him.”

“My poor little sister,” said the Princess, much perplexed, “you do not understand things.  What you speak of is impossible.  The Pope is a great king.”

“I know he is,” said Agnes,—­“and so is our Lord Jesus,—­but every soul may come to him.”

“I cannot explain to you now,” said the Princess,—­“there is not time to-night.  But I shall see you again.  I will send for you to come to my house, and there talk with you about many things which you need to know.  Meanwhile, promise me, dear child, not to try to do anything of the kind you spoke of until I have talked with you.”

“Well, I will not,” said Agnes, with a glance of docile affection, kissing the hand of the Princess.

The action was so pretty,—­the great, soft, dark eyes looked so fawn-like and confiding in their innocent tenderness, that the lady seemed much moved.

“Our dear Mother bless thee, child!” she said, laying her hand on her head, and stooping to kiss her forehead.

She left her at the door of the dormitory.

The Princess and her attendant went out of the church-door, where her litter stood in waiting.  The two took their seats in silence, and silently pursued their way through the streets of the old dimly-lighted city and out of one of its principal gates to the wide Campagna beyond.  The villa of the Princess was situated on an eminence at some distance from the city, and the night-ride to it was solemn and solitary.  They passed along the old Appian Way over pavements that had rumbled under the chariot-wheels of the emperors and nobles of a by-gone age, while along their way, glooming up against the clear of the sky, were vast shadowy piles,—­the tombs of the dead of other days.  All mouldering and lonely, shaggy and fringed with bushes and streaming wild vines through which the night-wind sighed and rustled, they might seem to be pervaded by the restless spirits of the dead; and as the lady passed them, she shivered, and, crossing herself, repeated an inward prayer against wandering demons that walk in desolate places.

Timid and solitary, the high-born lady shrank and cowered within herself with a distressing feeling of loneliness.  A childless widow in delicate health, whose paternal family had been for the most part cruelly robbed, exiled, or destroyed by the reigning Pope and his family, she felt her own situation a most unprotected and precarious one, since the least jealousy or misunderstanding might bring upon her, too, the ill-will of the Borgias, which had proved so fatal to the rest of her race.  No comfort in life remained to her but her religion, to whose practice she clung as to her all; but even in this her life was embittered by facts to which, with the best disposition in the world, she could not shut her