"I should never have remarked this friar but that he gazed upon me with so great an intentness--so great that I was unable to bear it." It was her turn to betray emotion.

She looked at me full and long--for once--and very searchingly.

She, too, had grown paler than was her habit.
"Agostino, what do you tell me ?" quoth she, and her voice quivered.
Now here was a deal of pother about a capuchin who had stared at the Madonnino of Anguissola! The matter was out of all proportion to the stir it made, and I conveyed in my next words some notion of that opinion.
But she stared wistfully.

"Never think it, Agostino," she besought me.
"You know not what it may import." And then she turned to Fra Gervasio.
"Who was this mendicant ?" she asked.
He had by now recovered from his erstwhile confusion.

But he was still pale, and I observed that his hand trembled.
"He must have been one of the two little brothers of St.Francis on their way, they said, from Milan to Loreto on a pilgrimage." "Not those you told me are resting here until to-morrow ?" From his face I saw that he would have denied it had it lain within his power to utter a deliberate falsehood.
"They are the same," he answered in a low voice.
She rose.