From that moment onward nothing else mattered. The tumultuous noises in the drawing-room died down, and there was no sound but the voices of the auctioneer and his clerk, which rumbled like a drum in the empty chamber.

It was four o'clock. Opening the window, Roma heard the music of a band.

At that a spirit of defiance took possession of her, and she put on her hat and cloak. As she passed through the empty drawing-room, the auctioneer, who was counting his notes with the dry rustle of a winnowing machine, looked up with his beady eyes and said:

"It has come out fairly well, Madame--better than we might have expected."

On reaching the piazza she hailed a cab. "The Pincio!" she cried, and settled in her seat. When she returned an hour afterwards she wrote her usual letter to David Rossi.

"High doings to-day! Have had a business on my own account, and done a roaring trade! Disposed of everything in the shop except what I wanted for myself. It isn't every trades-woman who can say that much, and I'm only a beginner to boot!

"Soberly, I've sold up. Being under notice to leave this apartment, I didn't want all this useless furniture, so I thought I might as well get done with it in good time. Besides, what right had I to soft beds and fine linen while you were an exile, sleeping Heaven knows where? And then my aunt, who is very ill and wants all sorts of luxuries, is rather expensive. So for the past week my drawing-room has been as full of fluting as a frog-pond at sunset, and on Sunday morning people were banging away at my poor piano as if it had been a hurdy-gurdy at an osteria.

"But, oh dear! how stupid the world is! People thought because I was selling what I didn't want I must be done. You would have laughed to hear their commentaries. To tell you the truth, I was so silly that I could have cried, but just at the moment when I felt a wee bit badly, down came your telegram like an angel from Heaven--and what do you think I did? The old Adam, or say the new Eve, took possession of me, and the minute the people were gone I hired a cab--a common garden cab, Roman variety, with a horse on its last legs and a driver in ragged tweeds--and drove off to the Pincio! I wanted to show those fine folk that I _wasn't_ done, and I did! They were all there, my dear friends and former flatterers--every one of them who has haunted my house for years, asking for this favour or that, and paying me in the coin of sweetest smiles. It seemed as if fate had gathered them all together for my personal inspection and wouldn't let a creature escape.

"Did they see me? Not a soul of them! I drove through them and between them, and they bowed across and before and behind me, and I might have been as invisible as Asmodeus for all the consciousness they betrayed of my presence. Was I humiliated?

Confused? Crushed? Oh, dear no! I was proud. I knew the day would come, the day was near, when they must try to forget all this and to persuade themselves it had never been, when for my own sake, even mine, and for yours, most of all for yours, they would come back humble, so humble and afraid.

"So I gave them every chance. I was bold and I did not spare them.

And when the sun began to sink behind St. Peter's and the band stopped, and we turned to go, I know which of us went home happy and unashamed. Oh, David Rossi! If you could have been there!

"I must write again on other matters. Meantime, one item of news.

Lawyer Napoleon, who continues to go to Regina C[oe]li to see the bewildering Bruno, saw Charles Minghelli there in prison clothes!

If the God who settles the question of sex had only remembered to make your wife the procurator-general, think how different the history of the world would have been! The worst of it is he mightn't have remembered to make you a woman; and in any case, things being so nicely settled as they are, I don't think I want to be a man. I waft a kiss to you on the wings of the wind. It's ponente to-day, so it ought to be warm. "ROMA.

"P.S.--My poor friend is still in trouble. Although not a religious woman, she has taken to saying a 'Hail Mary' every night on going to bed, and if it wasn't for that I'm afraid she would commit suicide, so frightful are the visions that enter her head sometimes. I've told her how wrong it would be to do away with herself, if only for the sake of her husband, who is away. Didn't I tell you he was away at present? It would hurt you dreadfully if _I_ were to die before _you_ return, wouldn't it? But I'm dying already to hear what you think of her. Write! Write! Write!"

X

When the King of Terrors could no longer be beaten back the Countess sent for the priest. Before he arrived she insisted on making her toilet and receiving him in the dressing-gown which she used to wear when people made ante-camera to her in the days of her gaiety and strength.

During the time of the Countess's confession Roma sat in her own room with a tremor of the heart which she had never felt before. Something personal and very intimate was creeping over her soul. She heard the indistinct murmur of the priest's voice at intervals, followed by a sibilant sound as of whispers and sobs.

The confession lasted fifteen minutes and then the priest came out of the room. "Now that your relative has made her peace with God," he said, "she must receive the Blessed Sacrament, Extreme Unction, and the Apostolic Blessing."

He went away to prepare for these offices, and the English Sister came to see Roma. "The Countess is like another woman already," she said, but Roma did not go into the sickroom.

The priest returned in half-an-hour. He had now two assistants, one carrying the cross and banner, the other a vessel of holy water and the volume of the Roman ritual. The Sister and Felice met them at the door with lighted candles.

"Peace be to this house!" said the priest.

And the assistants said, "And to all dwelling in it."

Then the priest took off an outer cloak, revealing his white surplice and violet stole, and followed the candles into the Countess's room. The little card-table had been covered with a damask napkin and laid out as an altar. All the dainty articles of the dying woman's dressing-table, her scent-flasks, rouge pots and puffs, were huddled together with various medicine bottles on a chest of drawers at the back. It was two o'clock in the afternoon and the sun was shining, so the curtains were drawn and the shutters closed. In the darkened room the candles burned like stars.

The ghostly viaticum being over, the priest and his assistants left the house. But the pale, grinning shadow of death continued to stand by the perfumed couch.

Roma had not been present at the offices, and presently the English Sister came to say that the Countess wished to see her.

"It's perfectly miraculous," said the Sister. "She's like another woman."

"Has she had her opiate lately?" said Roma, and the Sister answered that she had.

Roma found her aunt in a kind of mystical transport. A great light of joy, almost of pride, was shining in her face.

"All my pains are gone," she said. "All my sorrows and trials too. I have laid them all on Christ, and now I am going to mount up with Him to God."

Clearly she had no sense of her guilt towards Roma. She began to take a high tone with her, the tone of a saint towards a sinner.

"You must conquer your worldly passions, Roma. You have been a sinner, but you must not die a bad death. For instance, you are selfish. I am sorry to say it, but you know you are. You must confess and dedicate your life to fighting the sin in your sinful heart, and commend your soul to His mercy who has washed me from all stain."

But the Countess's ethereal transports did not wholly eclipse her worldly vanities when she proceeded to preparations for her funeral.

"Let there be a Requiem Mass, Roma. Everybody has it. It costs a little, certainly, but we can't think of money in a case like this. And send for the Raveggi Company to do the funeral pomps, and see they don't put me on a tressel. I am a noble and have a right to be laid on the church floor. See they bury me on high ground. The little Pincio is where the best people are buried now, above the tomb of Duke Massimo."

Roma continued to say "Yes," and "Yes," and "Yes," though her very heart felt sore.

Two hours afterwards the Countess was in her death agony. The tortured body had prevailed over the rapturous soul, and she was calling for more and more of the opiate. Everybody was odious to her, and her angular face was snapping all round.

The priest came to say the prayers for the dying. It was near to sunset, but the shutters were still closed, and the room had a grim solemnity. A band was playing on the Pincio, and the strains of an opera mingled with the petitions of the "breathing forth."

Everybody knelt except Roma. She alone was standing, but her heart was on its knees and her whole soul was prostrate.

The priest put a crucifix in the Countess's hand and she kissed it fervently, pronouncing all the time with gasping breath the name, "Gesu, Gesu, Gesu!"

The passing bell of the parish church was tolling in slow strokes, and the priest was praying fast and loud:

"May Christ who called thee receive thee, and let angels lead thee into the bosom of Abraham."

At one moment the crucifix dropped from the dying woman's hands, and her diamond rings, now too large for the shrivelled fingers, fell on to the counterpane. A little later her wig fell off, and for an instant her head was bald. Her forehead was perspiring; her breath was rattling in her chest. At last she became delirious.

"It's a lie!" she cried. "Everything I've said is a lie! I didn't kill it!" Then she rolled aside, and the crucifix fell on to the floor.

The priest, who had been praying faster and faster every moment, rose to his feet and said in an altered tone, "We commend to Thee, O Lord, the soul of Thy handmaiden, Elizabeth, that being dead to the world she may live to Thee, and those sins which through the frailty of human life she has committed Thou by the indulgence of Thy loving kindness may wipe out, through Christ our Lord, Amen."

The priest's voice died down to an inarticulate murmur and then stopped.

A moment afterwards the curtains were drawn back, the shutters parted, and the windows thrown open. A flood of sunset light streamed into the room. The candles burnt yellow and went out. The mystic rites were at an end.

Roma fled back to her own room. Her storm-tossed soul was foundering.

The band was still playing on the Pincio, and the sun was going down behind St. Peter's, when Roma took up her pen to write.

"She is dead! The life she clung to so desperately has left her at last.

How she held on to it! And now she has gone to give an account of the deeds done in this body. Yet who am I to talk like this? Only a poor, unhappy fellow-sinner.

"After confession she thought she was forgiven. She imagined she was pure, sinless, soulful. Perhaps she was so, and only the pains of death made her seem to fall away. But what a power in confession! Oh, the joy in her poor face when she had lifted the burden of her sins and secrets off her soul! Forgiveness! What a thing it must be to feel one's self forgiven!...

"I cannot write any more to-day, my dear one, but there will be news for you next time, great and serious news."