There can be little happiness when a whole life has been placed upon a false foundation, even though so dire a mistake may have been committed willingly and from a sense of duty and obligation, such as drove Corona to marry old Astrardente.

Consolation is not satisfaction; and though, when she reflected on what she had done, she knew that from her point of view she had done her best, she knew also that she had closed upon herself the gates of the earthly paradise, and that for her the prospect of happiness had been removed from the now to the hereafter--the dim and shadowy glass in which we love to see any reflection save that of our present lives.

And to her, thus living in submission to the consequences of her choice, that faith in things better which had inspired her to sacrifice was the chief remaining source of consolation.

There was a good man to whom she went for advice, as she had gone to him ever since she could remember.

When she found herself in trouble she never hesitated.
Padre Filippo was to her the living proof of the possibility of human goodness, as faith is to us all the evidence of things not seen.
Corona was in trouble now--in a trouble so new that she hardly understood it, so terrible and yet so vague that she felt her peril imminent.