The children moved off. They moved off, whispering together, and gesticulating, after the manner of their race: discussing something.

Presently they stopped; and the boy came running back, while his sister waited.

He doffed his hat, and said, "A thousand pardons, Excellency-"

"Yes? What is it?" Peter asked.

"With your Excellency's favour--is it obligatory that we should take the train?"

"Obligatory?" puzzled Peter. "How do you mean?"

"If it is not obligatory, we would prefer, with the permission of your Excellency, to save the money."

"But--but then you will have to walk!" cried Peter.

"But if it is not obligatory to take the train, we would pray your Excellency's permission to save the money. We should like to save the money, to give it to the father. The father is very poor. Fifty lire is so much."

This time it was Peter who looked for counsel to the d.u.c.h.essa.

Her eyes, still bright with tears, responded, "Let them do as they will."

"No, it is not obligatory--it is only recommended," he said to the boy, with a smile that he could n't help. "Do as you will. But if I were you, I should spare my poor little feet."

"Mille grazie, Eccellenze," the boy said, with a final sweep of his tattered hat. He ran back to his sister; and next moment they were walking resolutely on, westward, "into the great red light."

The d.u.c.h.essa and Peter were silent for a while, looking after them.

They dwindled to dots in the distance, and then, where the road turned, disappeared.

At last the d.u.c.h.essa spoke--but almost as if speaking to herself.

"There, Felix Wildmay, you writer of tales, is a subject made to your hand," she said.

We may guess whether Peter was startled. Was it possible that she had found him out? A sound, confused, embarra.s.sed, something composite, between an oh and ayes, seemed to expire in his throat.

But the d.u.c.h.essa did n't appear to heed it.

"Don't you think it would be a touching episode for your friend to write a story round?" she asked.

We may guess whether he was relieved.

"Oh--oh, yes," he agreed, with the precipitancy of a man who, in his relief, would agree to anything.

"Have you ever seen such courage?" she went on. "The wonderful babies!

Fancy fifteen days, fifteen days and nights, alone, unprotected, on the highway, those poor little atoms! Down in their hearts they are really filled with terror. Who would n't be, with such a journey before him?

But how finely they concealed it, mastered it! Oh, I hope they won't be robbed. G.o.d help them--G.o.d help them!"

"G.o.d help them, indeed," said Peter.

"And the little girl, with her medal of the Immaculate Conception. The father, after all, can hardly be the brute one might suspect, since he has given them a religious education. Oh, I am sure, I am sure, it was the Blessed Virgin herself who sent us across their path, in answer to that poor little creature's prayers."

"Yes," said Peter, ambiguously perhaps. But he liked the way in which she united him to herself in the p.r.o.noun.

"Which, of course," she added, smiling gravely into his eyes, "seems the height of absurdity to you?"

"Why should it seem the height of absurdity to me?" he asked.

"You are a Protestant, I suppose?"

"I suppose so. But what of that? At all events, I believe there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in the usual philosophies. And I see no reason why it should not have been the Blessed Virgin who sent us across their path."

"What would your Protestant pastors and masters do, if they heard you?

Isn't that what they call Popish superst.i.tion?"

"I daresay. But I'm not sure that there's any such thing as superst.i.tion. Superst.i.tion, in its essence, is merely a recognition of the truth that in a universe of mysteries and contradictions, like ours, nothing conceivable or inconceivable is impossible."

"Oh, no, no," she objected. "Superst.i.tion is the belief in something that is ugly and bad and unmeaning. That is the difference between superst.i.tion and religion. Religion is the belief in something that is beautiful and good and significant--something that throws light into the dark places of life--that helps us to see and to live."

"Yes," said Peter, "I admit the distinction." After a little suspension, "I thought," he questioned, "that all Catholics were required to go to Ma.s.s on Sunday?"

"Of course--so they are," said she.

"But--but you--" he began.

"I hear Ma.s.s not on Sunday only--I hear it every morning of my life."

"Oh? Indeed? I beg your pardon," he stumbled. "I--one--one never sees you at the village church."

"No. We have a chapel and a chaplain at the castle."

She mounted her bicycle.

"Good-bye," she said, and lightly rode away.

"So-ho! Her bigotry is not such a negligible quant.i.ty, after all," Peter concluded.

"But what," he demanded of Marietta, as she ministered to his wants at dinner, "what does one barrier more or less matter, when people are already divided by a gulf that never can be traversed? You see that river?" He pointed through his open window to the Aco. "It is a symbol.

She stands on one side of it, I stand on the other, and we exchange little jokes. But the river is always there, flowing between us, separating us. She is the daughter of a lord, and the widow of a duke, and the fairest of her s.e.x, and a millionaire, and a Roman Catholic.

What am I? Oh, I don't deny I 'm clever. But for the rest? ... My dear Marietta, I am simply, in one word, the victim of a misplaced attachment."

"Non capisco Francese," said Marietta.

XIV