CHAPTER XVII.
The day grew very hot, and Eleanor suffered visibly, even though the quality of the air remained throughout pure and fresh, and Lucy in the shelter of the broad _loggia_ felt nothing but a keen physical enjoyment of the glow and blaze that held the outer world.
After their midday meal Lucy was sitting idly on the outer wall of the _loggia_ which commanded the bit of road just outside the convent, when she perceived a figure mounting the hill.
'Father Benecke!' she said to Eleanor.

'What a climb for him in this heat! Did you say he had gone to Selvapendente?
Poor old man!--how hot and tired he looks!--and with that heavy parcel too!' And withdrawing herself a little out of sight she watched the priest.

He had just paused in a last patch of shade to take breath after the long ascent.

Depositing the bundle he had been carrying on a wayside stone, he took out his large coloured handkerchief and mopped the perspiration from his face with long sighs of exhaustion.

Then with his hands on his sides he looked round him.