“And was he not buried here?” asked Barbara; “here in this lovely inner court, where are the graves of so many monks?”

“No.  He was buried in Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, a church close by the Pantheon in Rome, and the Pope himself wrote his epitaph.  But it is indeed a great pity that he could not lie here, in the very midst of so many of his works, and where he lived so long.”

“Did Fra Angelico live before or after the prophet Savonarola, uncle?” asked Margery.  “We came here a little time ago with mother to visit the latter’s cell, and the church, in connection with our reading of ‘Romola.’”

“He lived before Savonarola, about a hundred years.  So that when Savonarola used to walk about through these rooms and corridors, he saw the same pictures we are now looking at.”

* * * * *

“I say, uncle, don’t you think I am having the best part of this, after all?” brightly asked Malcom, the following day, as Mr. Sumner entered the wide sunny room where he was lying on the sofa, propped up by cushions, while Barbara, Bettina, and Margery were clustered about him with their hands full of photographs of Fra Angelico’s paintings, and all trying to talk at once.  “The girls have told me everything; and I am almost sure I shall never mistake a Fra Angelico picture.  I know just what expression he put into his faces, just how quiet and as-if-they-never-could-be-used his hands are, and how straight the folds of his draperies hang, even though the people who wear them are dancing.  I know what funny little clouds, like bundles of cigars, his Madonnas sit upon up in the heavens.

“I am not quite sure, uncle dear, but I like your instructions best when second-hand,” he laughingly added.  “Betty has made me fairly love the old fellow by her stories of his unearthly goodness.  Was it not fine to refuse money for his work, and to decline to be made archbishop when the Pope asked him; and to recommend a brother monk for the office?  I think he ought to be called Saint Angelico.”

[Illustration:  FRA ANGELICO.  UFFUZI GALLERY, FLORENCE.

GROUP OF ANGELS.  FROM CORONATION OF THE VIRGIN.]

“Some people have called him the ‘St. John of Art,’” Mr. Sumner replied, with a bright smile at Malcom’s enthusiasm.  “I am not sure but yours is the better name, however.”

About this time people who frequented the Cascine Gardens and other popular drives in and about Florence began to notice with interest an elegant equipage containing a tall, slender, pale young man, two beautiful, brown-eyed girls, and oftentimes either a gray-haired woman in black or a sunny-haired young girl.  It had been purchased by Howard, and daily he wished Barbara and Bettina to drive with him.  Indeed, it now seemed as if the young man’s thoughts were beginning to centre wholly in this household; and suddenly warned by a few words spoken by Malcom, Mrs. Douglas became painfully conscious that a more