 come.«
    »I allow you your joke, but I am right for all that. She has nothing to
think about that profoundly interests her; her books are all but as sapless to
her as to you or me. She is sinking into melancholia.«
    »But, my dear girl, the chapel!«
    »She only pretends to think of it. Miriam is becoming a hypocrite; I have
noted several little signs of it since Cecily came. She poses - and in
wretchedness. Please to recollect that her age is four-and-twenty.«
    »I do so frequently, and marvel at human nature.«
    »I do so, and without marvelling at all, for I see human nature justifying
itself. I'll tell you what I am going to do, I shall propose to her to begin and
read Dante.«
    »The Inferno. Why, yes.«
    »And I shall craftily introduce to her attention one or two wicked and
worldly little books, such as, The Improvisatore, and the Golden Treasury, and
so on. Any such attempts at first would have been premature; but I think the
time has come.«
    Miriam knew no language but her own, and Eleanor by no means purposed
inviting her to a course of grammar and exercise. She herself, with her
husband's assistance, had learned to read Italian in the only rational way for
mature-minded persons - simply taking the text and a close translation, and
glancing from time to time at a skeleton accidence. This, of course, will not do
in the case of fools, but Miriam Baske, all appearances notwithstanding, did not
belong to that category. On hearing her cousin's proposition, she at first
smiled coldly; but she did not reject it, and in a day or two they had made a
fair beginning of the Inferno. Such a beginning, indeed, as surprised Eleanor,
who was not yet made aware that Miriam worked at the book in private with
feverish energy - drank at the fountain like one perishing of thirst. Andersen's
exquisite story was not so readily accepted, yet this too before long showed a
book-marker. And Miriam's countenance brightened; she could not conceal this
effect. Her step was a little lighter, and her speech became more natural.
    A relapse was to be expected; it came at the bidding of sirocco. One morning
the heavens lowered, grey, rolling; it might have been England. Vesuvius,
heavily laden at first with a cloud like that on Olympus when the gods are
wrathful
