The Teaching of a Great Love Paolina had been working all day in the church of San Vitale.

She had very nearly completed the copies she was to make there; and they were the most important in extent of all she had engaged to execute.

It had been necessary to erect a scaffolding for the purpose of bringing the artist sufficiently near to her subject; and the permission to have this done had been obtained by the all-powerful interest of the Marchese Lamberto.

Many an hour had Ludovico passed on that scaffolding by the artist's side as she plied her slow and laborious task; and many a "Paul" had the old sacristan pocketed with a grin of understanding, as he had opened the door of the church to the young Marchese, the object of whose visit he had long since learned to understand.
And Paolina herself?
Did she approve of these visits made thus in the perfect seclusion of that old church at the hours when its doors were shut to the public?
Did she like the hours so spent in tete-a-tete conversation with the handsome young Marchese?
She, who had so readily found the means to make the entreprenant Conte Leandro keep his distance, and had succeeded in disembarrassing herself of him altogether,--could she find no possible means for avoiding the assiduities of the Marchese Ludovico; could she not at least have induced old Orsola to accompany her in the church of San Vitale, as she had accompanied her in the gallery at Venice?
Perhaps old Orsola did not like climbing up a ladder to a scaffolding.
Perhaps she had the superstitious dislike to an empty, and lonely church not uncommon to uneducated Italians.

The fact was at all events that, even after Ludovico had, upon more than one occasion, brought the rushing blood into the dark face of Paolina by surprising her at her work on the scaffolding near the vaults of the church, old Orsola never made her appearance there.