Their apartments in Rome, to the scandal of Miss Manisty's Scotch instincts, had been haunted by ecclesiastics of every rank and kind.

Cardinals, Italian and foreign, had taken their afternoon tea from Mrs.Burgoyne's hands; the black and white of the Dominicans, the brown of the Franciscans, the black of the Jesuits,--the staircase in the Via Sistina had been well acquainted with them all.

Information not usually available had been placed lavishly at Manisty's disposal; he had felt the stir and thrill of the great Catholic organisation as all its nerve-threads gather to its brain and centre in the Vatican.

Nay, on two occasions, he had conversed freely with Leo XIII.

himself.
All this he had put aside, impatiently, that he might hurry on his book, and accomplish his _coup_.