She returned to her asylum, wondering and disconsolate, and the first person whom she saw was old Mona.

“Well, good morrow, sister!” she said.  “Know that I am here on a strange errand.  The Princess has taken such a liking to you that nothing will do but we must fetch you and your little one out to her villa.  I looked everywhere for you in church this morning.  Where have you hid yourselves?”

“We were there,” said Elsie, confused, and hesitating whether to speak of what had happened.

“Well, where is the little one?  Get her ready; we have horses in waiting.  It is a good bit out of the city.”

“Alack!” said Elsie, “I know not where she is.”

“Holy Virgin!” said Mona, “how is this?”

Elsie, moved by the necessity which makes it a relief to open the heart to some one, sat down on the steps of the church and poured forth the whole story into the listening ear of Mona.

“Well, well, well!” said the old servant, “in our days, one does not wonder at anything,—­one never knows one day what may come the next,—­but this is bad enough!”

“Do you think,” said Elsie, “there is any hope in that strange promise?”

“One can but try it,” said Mona.

“If you could but be there then,” said Elsie, “and take us to your mistress.”

“Well, I will wait, for my mistress has taken an especial fancy to your little one, more particularly since this morning, when a holy Capuchin came to our house and held a long conference with her, and after he was gone I found my lady almost in a faint, and she would have it that we should start directly to bring her out here, and I had much ado to let her see that the child would do quite as well after services were over.  I tired myself looking about for you in the crowd.”

The two women then digressed upon various gossiping particulars, as they sat on the old mossy, grass-grown steps, looking up over house-tops yellow with lichen, into the blue spring air, where flocks of white pigeons were soaring and careering in the soft, warm sunshine.  Brightness and warmth and flowers seemed to be the only idea natural to that charming weather, and Elsie, sad-hearted and foreboding as she was, felt the benign influence.  Rome, which had been so fatal a place to her peace, yet had for her, as it has for every one, potent spells of a lulling and soothing power.  Where is the grief or anxiety that can resist the enchantment of one of Rome’s bright, soft, spring days?

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE NIGHT-RIDE.