"When?" asked Armstrong, quickly.

"Now!"

"Splendid! I will order the carriage at once."

"There is rapid transit for you!" exclaimed Eustis. "Jack believes in striking while the iron is hot."

"What a narrow escape we have had," murmured Mary Sinclair, with a sigh of relief.

"Very well," said Helen, resignedly. "It may be just as well to have it over. Jack has been looking forward to this ever since he turned his face toward Florence, and he will be quite miserable until he has actually gratified his antic.i.p.ation.--But don't be away long, will you, Jack?"

"Miss Thayer will very likely find the staid company which we plan to keep quite as stupid as the rest of you antic.i.p.ate," replied Armstrong, "so we may be home sooner than you expect."

Inez had already disappeared in-doors to put on her hat, and Armstrong started out to call a carriage. Helen intercepted him as he crossed the veranda.

"You won't mind if I don't go with you to-day, will you, Jack? If it were just to see the treasures at the library I would urge them all to go; but I know what is in your mind, dear. Truly, I will go with you some time, and you shall try your experiment upon me; but I am not in the mood for it just now. I ought not to leave the others, anyway."

"It is all right, of course," he answered. "I wish you did feel like going, but your subst.i.tute seems to be enthusiastic enough to make up for your antipathy."

"Don't call it that," Helen answered, half-reproachfully; "it is simply that I am ashamed to have my ignorance exposed,--and it will give you such a splendid chance really to know Inez. Now run along and have a good time, and tell me all about it when you come home."

The little one-horse victoria soon left the villa behind, and was well along on the narrow descending road before either of its occupants broke the silence. As if by mutual consent, each was thinking what neither would have spoken aloud. Helen had not seen the expression of disappointment which pa.s.sed over her husband's face as she spoke. He would have given much if it might have been his wife beside him. He had studied the girl carefully, and had found in her an intuitive sympathy with the very subjects concerning which she disclaimed all knowledge. At first he had thought that she exaggerated her limitations because of his deeper study, but he soon discovered her absolute sincerity. It was a lack of confidence in herself, he inwardly explained, and when once in Florence he would give her that confidence which was the only element lacking to her complete understanding. But as yet he had been unable to get her inside the library, or even within range of the necessary atmosphere.

Inez Thayer's thoughts were upon the same subject, but from a different standpoint. Her last words to Helen, when Uncle Peabody had interrupted their conversation, framed a mild reproach. "If I had won a man like Jack Armstrong," Inez whispered to her, "I would not allow any one, not even you, to take my place on an excursion such as this, upon which he has so set his whole heart."

"You are a sweet little harmonizer, Inez," Helen had answered, smilingly, "but you are a silly child none the less. Jack and I understand each other perfectly. He knows my limitations, and, if I went, I should only spoil his full enjoyment. You will understand it and revel in it, and he will be supremely happy. If you were not so much better fitted naturally for this sort of thing, of course I should go rather than disappoint him, but, truly, the arrangement is much better as it is."

Inez had no opportunity to continue the conversation, but Helen had not convinced her. Hers was an intense nature, and she had much more of the romantic in her soul than her best friends gave her credit for. Her one serious love-affair had proved only an annoyance and mortification.

Ferdinand De Peyster was in many ways a desirable _parti_, as mammas with marriageable daughters were quite aware. He was possessed of a handsome competency, was not inconvenienced by business responsibilities, and his devotion to Inez Thayer was only whetted to a greater degree of constancy by the opposition it received from its particular object. He was not lacking in education, having spent four years in the freshman cla.s.s at Harvard; he was not unattractive, in his own individual way, and his one great desire, not even second to his striving for blue ribbons with his fine stable of blooded horses, was to have her accept the position of head of his household.

But Inez was repelled by the very subserviency of his devotion. Her love rested heavily upon respect, and this could be won only by a man who commanded it. John Armstrong fulfilled her ideal, and she wondered why Fate had not fashioned the man whom she had attracted in a similar mould.

Armstrong looked up from his reverie half guiltily, and for a moment his eyes met those of his companion squarely. Inez could not match the frank glance--it seemed to her as if he must have read her thoughts; but the heartiness of his words relieved her apprehension.

"What a bore you must think me, Miss Thayer! I have not spoken a word since we left the house."

"I must a.s.sume my share of responsibility for the silence," Inez replied, regaining her composure. "The seriousness of our quest must have had a sobering effect upon us both."

"But you won't find these old fellows so serious as you think,"

Armstrong hastened to say. "They were humanists and products of the movement which marked the breaking away from the ascetic severity preceding them. But, after all, they were the first to realize that life could be even better worth living if it contained beauty and happiness."

"You see how little I know about them, in spite of Helen's attempt to place me on a pedestal."

"Why, if it had not been for their work," he continued, enthusiastically, "the cla.s.sics might still have remained as dead to us as they were to those who lived in the thirteenth century. Instead of studying Virgil and Homer, we should have been brought up on theological literature and the 'Holy Fathers.'"

"I feel just as I did at my coming-out party," Inez replied--"that same feeling of awe and uncertainty. I am eager to go with you, yet I dread it somehow. It is not a presentiment exactly,--it is--"

"I know just what you mean," Armstrong interrupted, sympathetically; "and, if you feel like that now, just wait until you see old Cerini, the librarian. It is he who is responsible for my pa.s.sion for this sort of thing. Why, I remember, when I was here years ago and used to run in to see him at the Laurenziana, I never regarded him as a mortal at all; and I don't believe my reverence and veneration for the old man have abated a whit in the twelve years gone by."

The light vehicle had pa.s.sed through the Porta alla Croce, and was swaying from side to side like a ship at sea, rattling over the stones of the narrow city streets at such a rate that conversation was no longer a pleasure.

"Just why Florentine cabmen are content to drive at a snail's pace on a good road and feel impelled to rush at breakneck speed over bad ones is a phase of Italian character explained neither by Baedeker nor by Hare,"

remarked Armstrong, leaning nearer to Inez to make himself heard.

With a loud snap of his whip and a guttural "Whee-oop," the _cocchiere_ rounded the statue of John of the Black Bands, just missed the ancient book-stand immortalized by Browning in the _Ring and the Book_, and came to a sudden stop before the unpretentious entrance to the Biblioteca Laurenziana.

"You have been here before, of course?" he asked his companion as they pa.s.sed through the wicket-gate into the ancient cloisters of San Lorenzo.

"Once, with Baedeker to tell me to go on, and with the tall Italian custodian to stop me when I reached the red velvet rope stretched across the room, which I suppose marks the Dante division between Purgatory and Paradise."

"This time you shall not only enter Paradise, but you shall behold the Beatific Vision," laughed Armstrong.

Pa.s.sing by the main entrance of the library at the head of the stone stairs, Armstrong led the way along the upper cloister to a small door, where he pressed a little electric b.u.t.ton--an accessory not included in Michelangelo's original plans for the building. A moment later they heard the sound of descending footsteps, and presently a bearded face looked out at them through the small grated window. The inspection was evidently satisfactory, for the heavy iron bar on the inside was released and the door opened.

"Good-morning, Maritelli," said Armstrong in Italian. "Is the _direttore_ disengaged?"

"He is in his study, signore, awaiting your arrival."

Maritelli dropped the iron bar back into place with a loud clang and then led the way up the short flight of stone steps to the librarian's study. Armstrong detained Inez a moment at the top.

"I brought you in this way because I want you to see Cerini in his frame. It is a picture worthy the brush of an old master."

Maritelli knocked gently on the door and placed his ear against it to hear the response. Then he opened it quietly and bowed as Armstrong and his companion entered.

"Buon' giorno, padre." Armstrong gravely saluted the old man as he looked up. "I have brought to you another seeker after the gold in your treasure-house."

Cerini's face showed genuine delight as he rose and extended both hands to Inez. "Your wife!" he exclaimed; "I am glad indeed to greet her."

Armstrong flushed. "No, padre, not my wife, but her dearest friend, Miss Thayer."

The old man let one arm fall to his side with visible disappointment, which he vainly sought to conceal.

"I am sorry," he said, simply, taking Inez' hand in his own. "I have known this dear friend for many years, and have loved him for the love he gave to my work. I had hoped to greet his wife here, and to find that the _literae humaniores_ were to her the elixir of life that they are to me--and to him."

"When I tell her of my visit she will be eager to come to you as I have," said Inez, strangely touched by the keenness of his disappointment. "To-day she could not leave her guests."

"Will you first show Miss Thayer the illuminations and the rarest of the incunabula?" asked Armstrong, eager to change the subject; "and then will you let us come back here to talk with you?"

"With pleasure, my son, with pleasure. What shall I show her first?"

"That little 'Book of Hours' illuminated by Francesco d'Antonio, padre."

Cerini pulled up the great bunch of keys suspended from the end of his girdle and unlocked one of the drawers in the ancient wooden desk in front of him.

"I always wonder how you dare keep so priceless a treasure in that desk, and why it is not put on exhibition where visitors may see it,"

Armstrong queried.