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Late on the following morning Signora Selva, somewhat anxious because neither of her guests had as yet appeared, entered her sister's room quietly. Noemi was nearly dressed, and signed to her to be silent. Jeanne had fallen asleep at last. The two sisters left the room together and went to the study where Giovanni was waiting for them. Well? Was Don Clemente really the man?
She herself had come to explain to him, because her husband could not leave his guests at that moment. At the same time she would say good-night to Don Clemente, as she did not intend to be present at the meeting, being a woman and so ignorant. Perhaps she should meet him at the monastery in a few days. Was not he the Padre who received visitors?
We were now off the east end of Clemente Island, that bleak and ragged corner where the sea, whether calm or stormy, contended eternally with the black rocks, and where the green and white movement of waves was never still. When almost two hundred yards off the yellow kelp-beds I saw a shadow darker than the blue water. It seemed to follow the boat, rather deep down and far back. But it moved.
The young priest who was standing, almost timidly, behind Selva, exclaimed, "Oh! yes, yes!" Selva bowed his head with a sigh. The tall, dark figure leaning against the doorpost did not move, but the gaze fixed on Benedetto became inexpressibly intense, tender and sad. Don Clemente again bent over the invalid, entreating him to pause a moment, and the sister also begged him to rest.
"The Selvas told me you lived in the Veneto," the Padre added. Then Noemi understood. She smiled, and murmured a monosyllable which was neither "yes" nor "no"; she also was determined to take advantage of her position, and, thanks to this misunderstanding, obtain a private interview with Don Clemente, and warn him if necessary.
In his heart Don Clemente thought that if this really interested her greatly, it was not on account of her Protestantism, but on account of her friendship for Signora Dessalle. "Not often," he answered; "sometimes. Such souls usually prefer other Orders. So you are a Protestant? But you will have no objection to entering our church?
"We shall not meet again," said he, "because as soon as I have sent you the food, and spoken to these people, I must start for Santa Scolastica." In speaking of going to Subiaco or elsewhere, Benedetto had said "perhaps that, perhaps something else," with an accent so full of meaning that, when Don Clemente bade him farewell, he murmured: "Are you thinking of Rome?"
Benedetto entered, and offered him the Abbot's letter. "I must leave the monastery," he said, very calmly. "At once, and for ever." Don Clemente did not answer, but opened the letter. When he had read it he observed, smiling, that Benedetto's departure for Jenne had been decided upon the night before.
In the midst of all this, at the corner of two very quiet streets, stands the palace, now of the Duke of San Clemente, an ungainly, yellow structure of various epochs, with a pretty late sixteenth-century belvedere tower on one side; a lot of shuttered and heavily-grated seventeenth-century windows, ornamented with stone stay-laces and tags, upon the dark street; and to the back a desolate old garden, where the vines have crawled over the stonework, and the grotesque seventeenth-century statues, green and yellow with lichen, stand in niches among the ill-trimmed hedges of ilex and laurel: the most old-world house and garden in the old-world part of the town.
In fact some one, perhaps Don Clemente, perhaps one of his predecessors, had written, below it: "Omnes superbiae motus ligno crucis affigat." Benedetto prostrated himself on the floor, and placed his forehead where the knees should rest.
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