Report said, that when Father Fabiano had been sent by his superiors to occupy the miserable and forlorn sentinel’s post at the church-door of St. Apollinare, amid inundations in winter, and fever and ague in summer, his appointment to the dreary office had been of the nature of a penance and an exile.  It was said, too, that the sentence of exile, which placed him in his present position, had been an alleviation of a more rigorous punishment; that he had been allowed, after a period of many years of imprisonment in a monastery of his order at Venice, to change that punishment for the duty to which he had been appointed, and which would scarcely have seemed an amelioration of destiny to any one save a man who had for years been deprived of the light of the sun and the scent of the free air.  Some deed there had been in that life which had called for such monastic discipline; some outcome of human passion when the blood, that now crept slowly, while the aged monk passed the hours in waiting for visions before the altar of St. Apollinare, was running in his veins too rapidly for monastic requirements.

It was evident from the few words that he had let drop, when he became aware who the young Venetian visitor to the church under his care was, that some special circumstances caused him to feel a more than ordinary interest in her.  Some connection there must have been between some portion of his life and that of some member or members of her family.  Of what nature was it?  Monkish tribunals, however else they may treat those subjected to them, at least keep their secrets.  Frailties must be expiated; but they need not be exposed.  And the true story of the fault which condemned Father Fabiano to end his days amid the swamps of St. Apollinare, as well as the precise nature of the connection which had existed between him and Paolina’s parents, can be only matter of conjecture.

Paolina, as has been said, pursued her path slowly.  She had tripped along much more lightly on her way from the city to St. Apollinare.  And yet she was urged on by a burning anxiety to know whither Ludovico and Bianca had gone, and for what purpose they had come thither.  But, despite this nervous anxiety, she stepped slowly, because her heart disapproved of the course she was taking.  It seemed as if she was drawn on towards the forest by some mysterious mechanical force, which she had not the strength to resist.  Again and again she had well nigh made up her mind to turn aside from the path she was following.  She would go only a few steps further towards the edge of the forest.  She looked out eagerly before her, standing on tip-toe on every little bit of vantage ground which the path afforded.  She would only go as far as that next bend in the path.  But the bend in the path disclosed a stile a little further on, from which surely a view of all the ground between the path she was on and the farmhouse at which Ludovico and his companion had descended, might be had.  She would go so far and no further.  And thus, poor child, she went on and on, long and long after the monk had lost sight of her, and with a deep sigh, had turned to go back again into the church.