In the sick-room Emilia would read to Marietta, or say the rosary for her.

Marietta mended steadily day by day.  At the end of a fortnight she was able to leave her bed for an hour or two in the afternoon, and sit in the sun in the garden.  Then Sister Scholastica went back to her convent at Venzona.  At the end of the third week Marietta could be up all day.  But Gigi’s stalwart Carolina Maddalena continued to rule as vicereine in the kitchen.  And Emilia continued to come every morning.

“Why does the Duchessa never come?” Peter wondered.  “It would be decent of her to come and see the poor old woman.”

Whenever he thought of Cardinal Udeschini, the same strange feeling of joy would spring up in his heart, which he had felt when he had left the beautiful old man with Marietta, on the day of his first visit.  In the beginning he could only give this feeling a very general and indefinite expression.  “He is a man who renews one’s faith in things, who renews one’s faith in human nature.”  But gradually, I suppose, the feeling crystallised; and at last, in due season, it found for itself an expression that was not so indefinite.

It was in the afternoon, and he had just conducted the Cardinal and Emilia to their carriage.  He stood at his gate for a minute, and watched the carriage as it rolled away.

“What a heavenly old man, what a heavenly old man,” he thought.

Then, still looking after the carriage, before turning back into his garden, he heard himself repeat, half aloud

       “Nor knowest thou what argument
        Thy life to thy neighbour’s creed hath lent.”

The words had come to his lips, and were pronounced, were addressed to his mental image of the Cardinal, without any conscious act of volition on his part.  He heard them with a sort of surprise, almost as if some one else had spoken them.  He could not in the least remember what poem they were from, he could not even remember what poet they were by.  Were they by Emerson?  It was years since he had read a line of Emerson’s.

All that evening the couplet kept running in his head.  And the feeling of joy, of enthusiasm, in his heart, was not so strange now.  But I think it was intensified.

The next time the Cardinal arrived at Villa Floriano, and gave Peter his hand, Peter did not merely shake it, English fashion, as he had hitherto done.

The Cardinal looked startled.

Then his eyes searched Peter’s face for a second, keenly interrogative.  Then they softened; and a wonderful clear light shone in them, a wonderful pure, sweet light.

“Benedicat te Omnipotens Deus, Pater, et Filius, et Spiritus Sanctus,” he said, making the Sign of the Cross.

XXVII

Up at the castle, Cardinal Udeschini was walking backwards and forwards on the terrace, reading his Breviary.

Beatrice was seated under the white awning, at the terrace-end, doing some kind of needlework.