He had a strong desire
to ask Angela Sovrani a few questions concerning the affair, but
hesitated, lest his keen personal anxiety should betray the depth of
his feelings. Then, too, he was troubled by the fact that the
Hermenstein family had been from time immemorial devout Romanists,
and he felt that Sylvie must perforce be a firm adherent to that
faith.
"Better to leave Rome!" he said to himself, "Better to shake off the
witchery of her presence, and get back to England and to work. And
if I cannot kill or quell this love in me, at any rate it shall
serve me to good purpose,--it shall make me a better and a braver
man!"
He had promised to meet the Princesse D'Agramont that morning at the
Catacombs of St. Callistus, to see the illumination of the tomb of
St. Cecilia, which takes place there annually on the Saint's Feast-
Day, and he knew that Angela Sovrani and the Comtesse Hermenstein
were to be of the Princesse's party. He was somewhat late in
starting, and hired a fiacre to drive him along the Via Appia to his
destination, but when he arrived there Mass had already commenced. A
Trappist monk, tall and grim and forbidding of aspect, met him at
the entrance to the Catacombs with a lighted taper, and escorted him
in silence through the gloomy "Oratorium" and passage of tombs,--the
torch he carried flinging ghastly reflections on the mural paintings
and inscriptions, till, on reaching the tomb of St.
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