Aubrey said something by way of formal acknowledgment, and then took his leave.  He was singularly depressed, and his face, always quick to show traces of thought, had somewhat lost its former expression of eager animation.  The wily Gherardi had for the time so influenced his sensitive mind as to set it almost to the tune of the most despairing of Tennyson’s “Two Voices”,

    “A life of nothings, nothing worth,
     From that first nothing ere his birth,
     To that last nothing under earth.”

What was the use of trying to expound a truth, if the majority preferred a lie?

    “Will one bright beam be less intense,
     When thy peculiar difference
     Is cancelled in the world of sense?”

And Gherardi noted the indefinable touch of fatigue that gave the slight droop of the shoulders and air of languor to the otherwise straight slim figure as it passed from his presence,—­and smiled.  He had succeeded in putting a check on unselfish ardour, and had thrown a doubt into the pure intention of enthusiastic toil.  That was enough for the present.  And scarcely had Aubrey crossed the threshold—­scarcely had the echo of his departing footsteps died away—­when a heavy velvet curtain in the apartment was cautiously thrust aside, and Monsignor Moretti stepped out of a recess behind it, with a dignity and composure which would have been impossible to any but an Italian priest convicted of playing the spy.  Gherardi faced him confidently.

“Well?” he said, with a more exhaustive enquiry expressed in his look than in the simple ejaculation.

“Well!” echoed Moretti, as he slowly advanced into the centre of the room, “You have not done as much as I expected you would.  Your arguments were clever, but not—­to a man of his obstinacy, convincing.”

And sitting down, he turned his dark face and gleaming eyes full on his confrere, who with a shrug of his massive shoulders expressed in his attitude a disdainful relinquishment of the whole business.

“You have not,” pursued Moretti deliberately, “grasped anything like the extent of this man Leigh’s determination and indifference to results.  Please mark that last clause,—­indifference to results.  He is apparently alone in the world,—­he seems to have nothing to lose, and no one to care whether he succeeds or fails;—­a most dangerous form of independence!  And in his persistence and eloquence he is actually stopping—­yes, I repeat it,—­stopping and putting a serious check on the advancement of the Roman Catholic party.  And of course any check just now means to us a serious financial loss both in England and America,—­a deficit in Vatican revenues which will very gravely incommode certain necessary measures now under the consideration of His Holiness.  I expected you to grasp the man and hold him,—­not by intimidation but by flattery.”

“You think he is to be caught by so common a bait?” said Gherardi, “Bah!  He would see through it at once!”