The Marble Saloon

In an old Tuscan villa, a chapel ordinarily makes one among the numerous
apartments; though it often happens that the door is permanently closed,
the key lost, and the place left to itself, in dusty sanctity, like that
chamber in man's heart where he hides his religious awe. This was very
much the case with the chapel of Monte Beni. One rainy day, however,
in his wanderings through the great, intricate house, Kenyon had
unexpectedly found his way into it, and been impressed by its solemn
aspect. The arched windows, high upward in the wall, and darkened with
dust and cobweb, threw down a dim light that showed the altar, with a
picture of a martyrdom above, and some tall tapers ranged before it.
They had apparently been lighted, and burned an hour or two, and been
extinguished perhaps half a century before. The marble vase at the
entrance held some hardened mud at the bottom, accruing from the dust
that had settled in it during the gradual evaporation of the holy water;
and a spider (being an insect that delights in pointing the moral of
desolation and neglect) had taken pains to weave a prodigiously thick
tissue across the circular brim. An old family banner, tattered by
the moths, drooped from the vaulted roof. In niches there were some
mediaeval busts of Donatello's forgotten ancestry; and among them, it
might be, the forlorn visage of that hapless knight between whom and the
fountain-nymph had occurred such tender love passages.

Throughout all the jovial prosperity of Monte Beni, this one spot within
the domestic walls had kept itself silent, stern, and sad. When the
individual or the family retired from song and mirth, they here sought
those realities which men do not invite their festive associates to
share. And here, on the occasion above referred to, the sculptor had
discovered--accidentally, so far as he was concerned, though with a
purpose on her part--that there was a guest under Donatello's roof,
whose presence the Count did not suspect. An interview had since taken
place, and he was now summoned to another.