“Father,” she said at once, “I am come to have a little talk with you.  Have you a few moments to give me?”

“Sit down, my child,” he said.

He drew forward a straw chair for her and took one opposite.

“You are not in trouble?”

“I don’t know why I should be, but——­”

She was silent for a moment.  Then she said: 

“I want to tell you a little about my life.”

He looked at her kindly without a word.

His eyes were an invitation for her to speak, and, without further invitation, in as few and simple words as possible, she told him why she had come to Beni-Mora, and something of her parents’ tragedy and its effect upon her.

“I wanted to renew my heart, to find myself,” she said.  “My life has been cold, careless.  I never lost my faith, but I almost forgot that I had it.  I made little use of it.  I let it rust.”

“Many do that, but a time comes when they feel that the great weapon with which alone we can fight the sorrows and dangers of the world must be kept bright, or it may fail us in the hour of need.”

“Yes.”

“And this is an hour of need for you.  But, indeed, is there ever an hour that is not?”

“I feel to-day, I——­”

She stopped, suddenly conscious of the vagueness of her apprehension.  It made her position difficult, speech hard for her.  She felt that she wanted something, yet scarcely knew what, or exactly why she had come.

“I have been saying good-bye to Count Anteoni,” she resumed.  “He has gone on a desert journey.”

“For long?”

“I don’t know, but I feel that it will be.”

“He comes and goes very suddenly.  Often he is here and I do not even know it.”

“He is a strange man, but I think he is a good man.”

As she spoke about him she began to realise that something in him had roused the desire in her to come to the priest.

“And he sees far,” she added.

She looked steadily at the priest, who was waiting quietly to hear more.  She was glad he did not trouble her mind just then by trying to help her to go on, to be explicit.

“I came here to find peace,” she continued.  “And I thought I had found it.  I thought so till to-day.”

“We only find peace in one place, and only there by our own will according with God’s.”

“You mean within ourselves.”

“Is it not so?”

“Yes.  Then I was foolish to travel in search of it.”

“I would not say that.  Place assists the heart, I think, and the way of life.  I thought so once.”

“When you wished to be a monk?”

A deep sadness came into his eyes.

“Yes,” he said.  “And even now I find it very difficult to say, ’It was not thy will, and so it is not mine.’  But would you care to tell me if anything has occurred recently to trouble you?”

“Something has occurred, Father.”