"YES, of the three, I liked Pierre best," said Mrs. Churchill. "Yet it was hard to choose. I have lived so long in Italy that I confess it would have been a pleasure to see Eva at court; it's a very pretty little court they have now at Rome, I assure you, with that lovely Queen Margherita at the head. The old Marchese is to resign his post this month, and the King has already signified his intention of giving it to Gino. Eva, as the Marchesa Lamberti, living in that ideal old Lamberti palace, you know—Eva, I flatter myself, would have shone in her small way as brightly as Queen Margherita in hers. You may think I am assuming a good deal, Philip. But you have no idea how much pain has been taken with that child; she literally is fitted for a court or for any other high position. Yet at the same time she is very childlike. I have kept her so purposely; she has almost never been out of my sight. The Lambertis are one of the best among the old Roman families, and there could not be a more striking proof of Gino's devotion than his having persuaded his father to say (as he did to me two months ago) that he should be proud to welcome Eva 'as she is,' which meant that her very small dowry would not be considered an objection. As to Eva herself, of course the Lambertis, or any other family, would be proud to receive her," pursued Mrs. Churchill, with the quiet pride which in its unruffled serenity became her well. "But not to hesitate over her mere pittance of a portion, that is very remarkable; for the marriage-portion is considered a sacred point by all Italians; they are brought up to respect it—as we respect the Constitution."

"It's a very pretty picture," answered Philip Dallas—"the court and Queen Margherita, the handsome Gino and the old Lamberti palace. But I'm a little bewildered, Fanny; you speak of it all so appreciatively, yet Gino was certainly not the name you mentioned; Pierre, wasn't it?"

"Yes, Pierre," answered Mrs. Churchill, laughing and sighing with the same breath. "I've strayed far. But the truth is, I did like Gino, and I wanted to tell you about him. No, Eva will not be the Marchesa Lamberti, and live in the old palace; I have declined that offer. Well, then, the next was Thornton Stanley."

"Thornton Stanley? Has he turned up here? I used to know him very well."

"I thought perhaps you might."

"He is a capital fellow—when he can forget his first editions."

Mrs. Churchill folded her arms, placing one hand on each elbow, and slightly hugging herself. "He has forgotten them more than once in this house," she said, triumphantly.

"He is not only a capital fellow, but he has a large fortune—ten times as large, I venture to say, as your Lambertis have."

"I know that. But—"

"But you prefer an old palace. I am afraid Stanley could not build Eva an old castle. Couldn't you manage to jog on with half a dozen new ones?"

"The trouble with Thornton Stanley was his own uncertainty," said Fanny; "he was not in the least firm about staying over here, though he pretended he was. I could see that he would be always going home. More than that, I should not be at all surprised if at the end of five years—three even—he should have bought or built a house in New York, and settled down there forever."

"And you don't want that for your American daughter, renegade?"

Mrs. Churchill unfolded her arms. "No one can be a warmer American than I am, Philip—no one. During the war I nearly cried my eyes out; have you forgotten that? I scraped lint; I wanted to go to the front as nurse—everything. What days they were! We lived then. I sometimes think we have never lived since."

Dallas felt a little bored. He was of the same age as Fanny Churchill; but the school-girl, whose feelings were already those of a woman, had had her nature stirred to its depths by events which the lad had been too young to take seriously to heart. His heart had never caught up with them, though, of course, his reason had.

"Yes, I know you are flamingly patriotic," he said. "All the same, you don't want Eva to live in Fiftieth Street."

"In Fiftieth Street?"

"I chose the name at random. In New York."

"I don't see why you should be sarcastic," said Fanny. "Of course I expect to go back myself some time; I could not be content without that. But Eva—Eva is different; she has been brought up over here entirely; she was only three when I came abroad. It seems such a pity that all that should be wasted."

"And why should it be wasted in Fiftieth Street?"

"The very qualities that are admired here would be a drawback to her there," replied Mrs. Churchill. "A shy girl who cannot laugh and talk with everybody, who has never been out alone a step in her life, where would she be in New York?—I ask you that. While here, as you see, before she is eighteen—"

"Isn't the poor child eighteen yet? Why in the world do you want to marry her to any one for five years more at least?"

Mrs. Churchill threw up her pretty hands. "How little you have learned about some things, Philip, in spite of your winters on the Nile and your Scotch shooting-box! I suppose it is because you have had no daughters to consider."

"Daughters?—I should think not!" was Dallas's mental exclamation. Fanny, then, with all her sense, was going to make that same old mistake of supposing that a bachelor of thirty-seven and a mother of thirty-seven were of the same age.

"Why, it's infinitely better in every way that a nice girl like Eva should be married as soon as possible after her school-books are closed, Philip," Mrs. Churchill went on; "for then, don't you see, she can enter society—which is always so dangerous—safely; well protected, and yet quite at liberty as well. I mean, of course, in case she has a good husband. That is the mother's business, the mother's responsibility, and I think a mother who does not give her heart to it, her whole soul and energy, and choose well—I think such a mother an infamous woman. In this case I am sure I have chosen well; I am sure Eva will be happy with Pierre de Verneuil. They have the same ideas; they have congenial tastes, both being fond of music and art. And Pierre is a very lovable fellow; you will think so yourself when you see him."

"And you say she likes him?"

"Very much. I should not have gone on with it, of course, if there had been any dislike. They are not formally betrothed as yet; that is to come soon; but the old Count (Pierre's father) has been to see me, and everything is virtually arranged—a delightful man, the old Count. They are to make handsome settlements; not only are they rich, but they are not in the least narrow—as even the best Italians are, I am sorry to say. The Verneuils are cosmopolitans; they have been everywhere; their estate is near Brussels, but they spend most of their time in Paris. They will never tie Eva down in any small way. In addition, both father and son are extremely nice to me."

"Ah!" said Dallas, approvingly.

"Yes; they have the French ideas about mothers; you know that in France the mother is and remains the most important person in the family." As she said this, Mrs. Churchill unconsciously lifted herself and threw back her shoulders. Ordinarily the line from the knot of her hair behind to her waist was long and somewhat convex, while correspondingly the distance between her chin and her belt in front was surprisingly short: she was a plump woman, and she had fallen into the habit of leaning upon a certain beguiling steel board, which leads a happy existence in wrappings of white kid and perfumed lace.

"Not only will they never wish to separate me from Eva," she went on, still abnormally erect, "but such a thought would never enter their minds; they think it an honor and a pleasure to have me with them; the old Count assured me of it in those very words."

"And now we have the secret of the Belgian success," said Dallas.

"Yes. But I have not been selfish; I have tried to consider everything; I have investigated carefully. If you will stay half an hour longer you can see Pierre for yourself; and then I know that you will agree with me."

In less than half an hour the Belgian appeared—a slender, handsome young man of twenty-two, with an ease of manner and grace in movement which no American of that age ever had. With all his grace, however, and his air of being a man of the world, there was such a charming expression of kindliness and purity in his still boyish eyes that any mother, with her young daughter's happiness at heart, might have been pardoned for coveting him as a son-in-law. This Dallas immediately comprehended. "You have chosen well," he said to Fanny, when they were left for a moment alone; "the boy's a jewel."

Before the arrival of Pierre, Eva Churchill, followed by her governess, had come out to join her mother on the terrace; Eva's daily lessons were at an end, save that the music went on; Mlle. Legrand was retained as a useful companion.

Following Pierre, two more visitors appeared, not together; one was an Englishman of fifty, small, meagre, plain in face; the other an American, somewhat younger, a short, ruddy man, dressed like an Englishman. Mrs. Churchill mentioned their names to Dallas: "Mr. Gordon-Gray." "Mr. Ferguson."

It soon appeared that Mr. Gordon-Gray and Mr. Ferguson were in the habit of looking in every afternoon, at about that hour, for a cup of tea. Dallas, who hated tea, leaned back in his chair and watched the scene, watched Fanny especially, with the amused eyes of a contemporary who remembers a different past. Fanny was looking dimpled and young; her tea was excellent, her tea-service elaborate (there was a samovar); her daughter was docile, her future son-in-law a Count and a pearl; in addition, her terrace was an enchanting place for lounging, attached as it was to a pink-faced villa that overlooked the sea.

Nor were there wanting other soft pleasures. "Dear Mrs. Murray-Churchill, how delicious is this nest of yours!" said the Englishman, with quiet ardor; "I never come here without admiring it."

Fanny answered him in a steady voice, though there was a certain flatness in its tone: "Yes, it's very pretty indeed." Her face was red; she knew that Dallas was laughing; she would not look in his direction. Dallas, however, had taken himself off to the parapet, where he could have his laugh out at ease: to be called Mrs. Murray-Churchill as a matter of course in that way—what joy for Fanny!

Eva was listening to the busy Mark Ferguson; he was showing her a little silver statuette which he had unearthed that morning in Naples, "in a dusty out-of-the-way shop, if you will believe it, where there was nothing else but rubbish—literally nothing. From the chasing I am inclined to think it's fifteenth century. But you will need glasses to see it well; I can lend you a pair of mine."

"I can see it perfectly—thanks," said Eva. "It is very pretty, I suppose."

"Pretty, Miss Churchill? Surely it's a miracle!" Ferguson protested.

Pierre, who was sitting near the mother, glanced across and smiled. Eva did not smile in reply; she was looking vaguely at the blackened silver; but when he came over to see for himself the miracle, then she smiled very pleasantly.

Pierre was evidently deeply in love; he took no pains to conceal it; but during the two hours he spent there he made no effort to lure the young girl into the drawing-room, or even as far as the parapet. He was very well bred. At present he stood beside her and beside Mark Ferguson, and talked about the statuette. "It seems to me old Vienna," he said.

"Signor Bartalama," announced Angelo, Mrs. Churchill's man-servant, appearing at the long window of the drawing-room which served as one of the terrace doors; he held the lace curtains apart eagerly, with the smiling Italian welcome.

Fanny had looked up, puzzled. But when her eyes fell upon the figure emerging from the lace she recognized it instantly. "Horace Bartholomew! Now from what quarter of the heavens do you drop this time?"

"So glad you call it heaven," said the new-comer, as she gave him her hand. "But from heaven indeed this time, Mrs. Churchill—I say so emphatically; from our own great, grand country—with the permission of the present company be it spoken." And he bowed slightly to the Englishman and Pierre, his discriminating glance including even the little French governess, who smiled (though non-comprehendingly) in reply. "May I present to you a compatriot, Mrs. Churchill?" he went on. "I have taken the liberty of bringing him without waiting for formal permission; he is, in fact, in your drawing-room now. His credentials, however, are small and puny; they consist entirely of the one item—that I like him."

"That will do perfectly," said Fanny, smiling.

Bartholomew went back to the window and parted the curtains. "Come," he said. A tall man appeared. "Mrs. Churchill, let me present to you Mr. David Rod."

Mrs. Churchill was gracious to the stranger; she offered him a chair near hers, which he accepted; a cup of tea, which he declined; and the usual small questions of a first meeting, which only very original minds are bold enough to jump over. The stranger answered the questions promptly; he was evidently not original. He had arrived two days before; this was his first visit to Italy; the Bay of Naples was beautiful; he had not been up Vesuvius; he had not visited Pompeii; he was not afraid of fever; and he had met Horace Bartholomew in Florida the year before.

"I am told they are beginning to go a great deal to Florida," remarked Fanny.

"I don't go there; I live there," Rod answered.

"Indeed! in what part?" (She brought forward the only names she knew.) "St. Augustine, perhaps? Or Tallahassee?"

"No; I live on the southern coast; at Punta Palmas?"

"How Spanish that is! Perhaps you have one of those old Spanish plantations?" She had now exhausted all her knowledge of the State save a vague memory of her school geography: "Where are the Everglades?" "They are in the southern part of Florida. They are shallow lakes filled with trees." But the stranger could hardly live in such a place as that.

"No," answered Rod; "my plantation isn't old and it isn't Spanish; it's a farm, and quite new. I am over here now to get hands for it."

"Hands?"

"Yes, laborers—Italians. They work very well in Florida."

Eva and Mademoiselle Legrand had turned with Pierre to look at the magnificent sunset. "Did you receive the flowers I sent this morning?" said Pierre, bending his head so that if Eva should glance up when she answered, he should be able to look into her eyes.

"Yes; they were beautiful," said Eva, giving the hoped-for glance.

"Yet they are not in the drawing-room."

"You noticed that?" she said, smiling. "They are in the music-room; Mademoiselle put them there."

"They are the flowers for Mozart, are they not?" said Mademoiselle—"heliotrope and white lilies; and we have been studying Mozart this morning. The drawing-room, as you know, Monsieur le Comte, is always full of roses."

"And how do you come on with Mozart?" asked Pierre.

"As usual," answered Eva. "Not very well, I suppose."

"'MRS. CHURCHILL, LET ME PRESENT TO YOU MR. DAVID ROD'"
"'MRS. CHURCHILL, LET ME PRESENT TO YOU MR. DAVID ROD'"

Mademoiselle twisted her handkerchief round her fingers. She was passionately fond of music; it seemed to her that her pupil, who played accurately, was not. Pierre also was fond of music, and played with taste. He had not perceived Eva's coldness in this respect simply because he saw no fault in her.

"I want to make up a party for the Deserto," he went on, "to lunch there. Do you think Madame Churchill will consent?"

"Probably," said Eva.

"I hope she will. For when we are abroad together, under the open sky, then it sometimes happens I can stay longer by your side."

"Yes; we never have very long talks, do we?" remarked Eva, reflectively.

"Do you desire them?" said Pierre, with ardor. "Ah, if you could know how I do! With me it is one long thirst. Say that you share the feeling, even if only a little; give me that pleasure."

"No," said Eva laughing, "I don't share it at all. Because, if we should have longer talks, you would find out too clearly that I am not clever."

"Not clever!" said Pierre, with all his heart in his eyes. Then, with his unfailing politeness, he included Mademoiselle. "She is clever, Mademoiselle?"

"She is good," answered Mademoiselle, gravely. "Her heart has a depth—but a depth!"

"I shall fill it all," murmured Pierre to Eva. "It is not that I myself am anything, but my love is so great, so vast; it holds you as the sea holds Capri. Some time—some time, you must let me try to tell you!"

Eva glanced at him. Her eyes had for the moment a vague expression of curiosity.

This little conversation had been carried on in French; Mademoiselle spoke no English, and Pierre would have been incapable of the rudeness of excluding her by means of a foreign tongue.

II

The pink villa was indeed a delicious nest, to use the Englishman's phrase. It crowned one of the perpendicular cliffs of Sorrento, its rosy faÇade overlooking what is perhaps the most beautiful expanse of water in the world—the Bay of Naples. The broad terrace stretched from the drawing room windows to the verge of the precipice; leaning against its strong stone parapet, with one's elbows comfortably supported on the flat top (which supported also several battered goddesses of marble), enjoying the shade of a lemon-tree set in a great vase of tawny terra-cotta—leaning thus, one could let one's idle gaze drop straight down into the deep blue water below, or turn it to the white line of Naples opposite, shining under castled heights, to Vesuvius with its plume of smoke, or to beautiful dark Ischia rising from the waves in the west, guarding the entrance to the sea. On each side, close at hand, the cliffs of Sorrento stretched away, tipped with their villas, with their crowded orange and lemon groves. Each villa had its private stairway leading to the beach below; strange dark passages, for the most part cut in the solid rock, winding down close to the face of the cliff, so that every now and then a little rock-window can let in a gleam of light to keep up the spirits of those who are descending. For every one does descend: to sit and read among the rocks; to bathe from the bathing-house on the fringe of beach; to embark for a row to the grottos or a sail to Capri.

SORRENTO
SORRENTO

The afternoon which followed the first visit of Philip Dallas to the pink villa found him there a second time; again he was on the terrace with Fanny. The plunging sea-birds of the terrace's mosaic floor were partially covered by a large Persian rug, and it was upon this rich surface that the easy-chairs were assembled, and also the low tea-table, which was of a construction so solid that no one could possibly knock it over. A keen observer had once said that that table was in itself a sufficient indication that Fanny's house was furnished to attract masculine, not feminine, visitors (a remark which was perfectly true).

"You are the sun of a system of masculine planets, Fanny," said Dallas. "After long years, that is how I find you."

"Oh, Philip—we who live so quietly!"

"So is the sun quiet, I suppose; I have never heard that he howled. Mr. Gordon-Gray, Mark Ferguson, Pierre de Vernueil, Horace Bartholomew, unknown Americans. Do they come to see Eva or you?"

"They come to see the view—as you do; to sit in the shade and talk. I give very good dinners too," Fanny added, with simplicity.

"O romance! good dinners on the Bay of Naples!"

"Well, you may laugh; but nothing draws men of a certain age—of a certain kind, I mean; the most satisfactory men, in short—nothing draws them so surely as a good dinner delicately served," announced Fanny, with decision. "Please go and ring for the tea."

"I don't wonder that they all hang about you," remarked Dallas as he came back, his eyes turning from the view to his hostess in her easy-chair. "Your villa is admirable, and you yourself, as you sit there, are the personification of comfort, the personification, too, of gentle, sweet, undemonstrative affectionateness. Do you know that, Fanny?"

Fanny, with a very pink blush, busied herself in arranging the table for the coming cups.

Dallas smiled inwardly. "She thinks I am in love with her because I said that about affectionateness," he thought. "Oh, the fatuity of women!"

At this moment Eva came out, and presently appeared Mr. Gordon-Gray and Mark Ferguson. A little later came Horace Bartholomew. The tea had been brought; Eva handed the cups. Dallas, looking at her, was again struck by something in the manner and bearing of Fanny's daughter. Or rather he was not struck by it; it was an impression that made itself felt by degrees, as it had done the day before—a slow discovery that the girl was unusual.

She was tall, dressed very simply in white. Her thick smooth flaxen hair was braided in two long flat tresses behind, which were doubled and gathered up with a ribbon, so that they only reached her shoulders. This school-girl coiffure became her young face well. Yes, it was a very young face. Yet it was a serious face too. "Our American girls are often serious, and when they are brought up under the foreign system it really makes them too quiet," thought Dallas. Eva had a pair of large gray eyes under dark lashes: these eyes were thoughtful; sometimes they were dull. Her smooth complexion was rather brown. The oval of her face was perfect. Though her dress was so child-like, her figure was womanly; the poise of her head was noble, her step light and free. Nothing could be more unlike the dimpled, smiling mother than was this tall, serious daughter who followed in her train. Dallas tried to recall Edward Churchill (Edward Murray Churchill), but could not; he had only seen him once. "He must have been an obstinate sort of fellow," he said to himself. The idea had come to him suddenly from something in Eva's expression. Yet it was a sweet expression; the curve of the lips was sweet.

"She isn't such a very pretty girl, after all," he reflected, summing her up finally before he dismissed her. "Fanny is a clever woman to have made it appear that she is."

At this moment Eva, having finished her duties as cup-bearer, walked across the terrace and stood by the parapet, outlined against the light.

"By Jove she's beautiful!" thought Dallas.

Fanny's father had not liked Edward Churchill; he had therefore left his money tied up in such a way that neither Churchill nor any children whom he might have should be much benefited by it; Fanny herself, though she had a comfortable income for life, could not dispose of it. This accounted for the very small sum belonging to Eva: she had only the few hundreds that came to her from her father.

But she had been brought up as though she had many thousands; studiedly quiet as her life had been, studiedly simple as her attire always was, in every other respect her existence had been arranged as though a large fortune certainly awaited her. This had been the mother's idea; she had been sure from the beginning that a large fortune did await her daughter. It now appeared that she had been right.

"I don't know what you thought of me for bringing a fellow-countryman down upon you yesterday in that unceremonious way, Mrs. Churchill," Bartholomew was saying. "But I wanted to do something for him—I met him at the top of your lane by accident; it was an impulse."

"Oh, I'm sure—any friend of yours—" said Fanny, looking into the teapot.

Bartholomew glanced round the little circle on the rug, with an expression of dry humor in his brown eyes. "You didn't any of you like him—I see that," he said.

There was a moment's silence.

"Well, he is rather a commonplace individual, isn't he?" said Dallas, unconsciously assuming the leadership of this purely feminine household.

"I don't know what you mean by commonplace; but yes, I do, coming from you, Dallas. Rod has never been abroad in his life until now; and he's a man with convictions."

"Oh, come, don't take that tone," said Mark Ferguson; "I've got convictions too; I'm as obstinate about them as an Englishman."

"What did your convictions tell you about Rod, then, may I ask?" pursued Bartholomew.

"I didn't have much conversation with him, you may remember; I thought he had plenty of intelligence. His clothes were—were a little peculiar, weren't they?"

"Made in Tampa, probably. And I've no doubt but that he took pains with them—wanted to have them appropriate."

"That is where he disappointed me," said Gordon-Gray—"that very appearance of having taken pains. When I learned that he came from that—that place in the States you have just named—a wild part of the country, is it not?—I thought he would be more—more interesting. But he might as well have come from Clerkenwell."

"You thought he would be more wild, you mean; trousers in his boots; long hair; knives."

All the Americans laughed.

"Yes. I dare say you cannot at all comprehend our penchant for that sort of thing," said the Englishman, composedly. "And—er—I am afraid there would be little use in attempting to explain it to you. But this Mr. Rod seemed to me painfully unconscious of his opportunities; he told me (when I asked) that there was plenty of game there—deer, and even bears and panthers—royal game; yet he never hunts."

"He never hunts, because he has something better to do," retorted Bartholomew.

"Ah, better?" murmured the Englishman, doubtfully.

Bartholomew got up and took a chair which was nearer Fanny. "No—no tea," he said, as she made a motion towards a cup; then, without further explaining his change of position, he gave her a little smile. Dallas, who caught this smile on the wing, learned from it unexpectedly that there was a closer intimacy between his hostess and Bartholomew than he had suspected. "Bartholomew!" he thought, contemptuously. "Gray—spectacles—stout." Then suddenly recollecting the increasing plumpness of his own person, he drew in his out-stretched legs, and determined, from that instant, to walk fifteen miles a day.

"Rod knows how to shoot, even though he doesn't hunt," said Bartholomew, addressing the Englishman. "I saw him once bring down a mad bull, who was charging directly upon an old man—the neatest sort of a hit."

"He himself being in a safe place meanwhile," said Dallas.

"On the contrary, he had to rush forward into an open field. If he had missed his aim by an eighth of an inch, the beast—a terrible creature—would have made an end of him."

"And the poor old man?" said Eva.

"He was saved, of course; he was a rather disreputable old darky. Another time Rod went out in a howling gale—the kind they have down there—to rescue two men whose boat had capsized in the bay. They were clinging to the bottom; no one else would stir; they said it was certain death; but Rod went out—he's a capital sailor—and got them in. I didn't see that myself, as I saw the bull episode; I was told about it."

"By Rod?" said Dallas.

"By one of the men he saved. As you've never been saved yourself, Dallas, you probably don't know how it feels."

"He seems to be a modern Chevalier Bayard, doesn't he?" said good-natured Mark Ferguson.

"He's modern, but no Bayard. He's a modern and a model pioneer—"

"Pioneers! oh, pioneers!" murmured Gordon-Gray, half chanting it.

None of the Americans recognized his quotation.

"He's the son of a Methodist minister," Bartholomew went on. "His father, a missionary, wandered down to Florida in the early days, and died there, leaving a sickly wife and seven children. You know the sort of man—a linen duster for a coat, prunella shoes, always smiling and hopeful—a great deal about 'Brethren.' Fortunately they could at least be warm in that climate, and fish were to be had for the catching; but I suspect it was a struggle for existence while the boys were small. David was the youngest; his five brothers, who had come up almost laborers, were determined to give this lad a chance if they could; together they managed to send him to school, and later to a forlorn little Methodist college somewhere in Georgia. David doesn't call it forlorn, mind you; he still thinks it an important institution. For nine years now—he is thirty—he has taken care of himself; he and a partner have cleared this large farm, and have already done well with it. Their hope is to put it all into sugar in time, and a Northern man with capital has advanced them the money for this Italian colonization scheme: it has been tried before in Florida, and has worked well. They have been very enterprising, David and his partner; they have a saw-mill running, and two school-houses already—one for whites, one for blacks. You ought to see the little darkies, with their wool twisted into twenty tails, going proudly in when the bell rings," he added, turning to Fanny.

"And the white children, do they go too?" said Eva.

"Yes, to their own school-house—lank girls, in immense sun-bonnets, stalking on long bare feet. He has got a brisk little Yankee school-mistress for them. In ten years more I declare he will have civilized that entire neighborhood."

"You are evidently the Northern man with capital," said Dallas.

"I don't care in the least for your sneers, Dallas; I'm not the Northern man, but I should like to be. If I admire Rod, with his constant driving action, his indomitable pluck, his simple but tremendous belief in the importance of what he has undertaken to do, that's my own affair. I do admire him just as he stands, clothes and all; I admire his creaking saw-mill; I admire his groaning dredge; I even admire his two hideously ugly new school-houses, set staring among the stumps."

"Tell me one thing, does he preach in the school-houses on Sundays and Friday evenings, say?" asked Ferguson. "Because if he does he will make no money, whatever else he may make. They never do if they preach."

"It's his father who was the minister, not he," said Bartholomew. "David never preached in his life; he wouldn't in the least know how. In fact, he's no talker at all; he says very little at any time; he's a doer—David is; he does things. I declare it used to make me sick of myself to see how much that fellow accomplished every day of his life down there, and thought nothing of it at all."

"And what were you doing 'down there,' besides making yourself sick, if I may ask?" said Ferguson.

"Oh, I went down for the hunting, of course. What else does one go to such a place for?"

"Tell me a little about that, if you don't mind," said the Englishman, interested for the first time.

"M. de Verneuil wants us all to go to the Deserto some day soon," said Fanny; "a lunch party. We shall be sure to enjoy it; M. de Verneuil's parties are always delightful."

III

The end of the week had been appointed for Pierre's excursion.

The morning opened fair and warm, with the veiled blue that belongs to the Bay of Naples, the soft hazy blue which is so different from the dry glittering clearness of the Riviera.

Fanny was mounted on a donkey; Eva preferred to walk, and Mademoiselle accompanied her. Pierre had included in his invitation the usual afternoon assemblage at the villa—Dallas, Mark Ferguson, Bartholomew, Gordon-Gray, and David Rod.

For Fanny had, as Dallas expressed it, "taken up" Rod; she had invited him twice to dinner. The superfluous courtesy had annoyed Dallas, for of course, as Rod himself was nothing, less than nothing, the explanation must lie in the fact that Horace Bartholomew had suggested it. "Bartholomew was always wrong-headed; always picking up some perfectly impossible creature, and ramming him down people's throats," he thought, with vexation.

Bartholomew was walking now beside Fanny's donkey.

Mark Ferguson led the party, as it moved slowly along the narrow paved road that winds in zigzags up the mountain; Eva, Mademoiselle, Pierre, Dallas, and Rod came next. Fanny and Bartholomew were behind; and behind still, walking alone and meditatively, came Gordon-Gray, who looked at life (save for the hunting) from the standpoint of the Italian Renaissance. Gordon-Gray knew a great deal about the Malatesta family; he had made a collection of Renaissance cloak clasps; he had written an essay on the colors of the long hose worn in the battling, leg-displaying days which had aroused his admiration, aroused it rather singularly, since he himself was as far as possible from having been qualified by nature to shine in such vigorous society.

Pierre went back to give some directions to one of the men in the rear of their small procession.

When he returned, "So the bears sometimes get among the canes?" Eva was saying.

"But then, how very convenient," said Pierre; "for they can take the canes and chastise them punctually." He spoke in his careful English.

"They're sugar-canes," said Rod.

"It's his plantation we are talking about," said Eva. "Once it was a military post, he says. Perhaps like Ehrenbreitstein."

"Exactly," said Dallas, from behind; "the same massive frowning stone walls."

"There were four one-story wooden barracks once," said Rod; "whitewashed; flag-pole in the centre. There's nothing now but a chimney; we've taken the boards for our mill."

"See the cyclamen, good folk," called out Gordon-Gray.

On a small plateau near by a thousand cyclamen, white and pink, had lifted their wings as if to fly away. Off went Pierre to get them for Eva.

ON THE WAY TO THE DESERTO
ON THE WAY TO THE DESERTO

"Have you ever seen the bears in the canes yourself?" pursued Eva.

"I've seen them in many places besides canes," answered Rod, grimly.

"I too have seen bears," Eva went on. "At Berne, you know."

"The Punta Palmas bears are quite the same," commented Dallas. "When they see Mr. Rod coming they sit up on their hind legs politely. And he throws them apples."

"No apples; they won't grow there," said Rod, regretfully. "Only oranges."

"Do you make the saw-mill go yourself—with your own hands?" pursued Eva.

"Not now. I did once."

"Wasn't it very hard work?"

"That? Nothing at all. You should have seen us grubbing up the stumps—Tipp and I!"

"Mr. Tipp is perhaps your partner?" said Dallas.

"Yes; Jim Tipp. Tipp and Rod is the name of the firm."

"Tipp—and Rod," repeated Dallas, slowly. Then with quick utterance, as if trying it, "Tippandrod."

Pierre was now returning with his flowers. As he joined them, round the corner of their zigzag, from a pasture above came a troop of ponies that had escaped from their driver, and were galloping down to Sorrento; two and two they came rushing on, too rapidly to stop, and everybody pressed to one side to give them room to pass on the narrow causeway.

Pierre jumped up on the low stone wall and extended his hand to Eva. "Come!" he said, hastily.

Rod put out his arm and pushed each outside pony, as he passed Eva, forcibly against his mate who had the inside place; a broad space was thus left beside her, and she had no need to leave the causeway. She had given one hand to Pierre as a beginning; he held it tightly. Mademoiselle meanwhile had climbed the wall like a cat. There were twenty of the galloping little nags; they took a minute or two to pass. Rod's out-stretched hands, as he warded them off, were seen to be large and brown.

Eva imagined them "grubbing up" the stumps. "What is grubbing?" she said.

"It is writing for the newspapers in a street in London," said Pierre, jumping down. "And you must wear a torn coat, I believe." Pierre was proud of his English.

He presented his flowers.

Mademoiselle admired them volubly. "They are like souls just ready to wing their way to another world," she said, sentimentally, with her head on one side. She put her well-gloved hand in Eva's arm, summoned Pierre with an amiable gesture to the vacant place at Eva's left hand, and the three walked on together.

The Deserto, though disestablished and dismantled, like many another monastery, by the rising young kingdom, held still a few monks; their brown-robed brethren had aided Pierre's servant in arranging the table in the high room which commands the wonderful view of the sea both to the north and the south of the Sorrento peninsula, with Capri lying at its point too fair to be real—like an island in a dream.

said Mark Ferguson. No one knew what he meant; he did not know himself. It was a poetical inspiration—so he said.

AT THE DESERTO
AT THE DESERTO

The lunch was delicate, exquisite; everything save the coffee (which the monks wished to provide: coffee, black-bread, and grapes which were half raisins was the monks' idea of a lunch) had been sent up from Sorrento. Dallas, who was seated beside Fanny, gave her a congratulatory nod.

"Yes, all Pierre does is well done," she answered, in a low tone, unable to deny herself this expression of maternal content.

Pierre was certainly a charming host. He gave them a toast; he gave them two; he gave them a song: he had a tenor voice which had been admirably cultivated, and his song was gay and sweet. He looked very handsome; he wore one of the cyclamen in his button-hole; Eva wore the rest, arranged by the deft fingers of Mademoiselle in a knot at her belt. But at the little feast Fanny was much more prominent than her daughter: this was Pierre's idea of what was proper; he asked her opinion, he referred everything to her with a smile which was homage in itself. Dallas, after a while, was seized with a malicious desire to take down for a moment this too prosperous companion of his boyhood. It was after Pierre had finished his little song. "Do you ever sing now, Fanny?" he asked, during a silence. "I remember how you used to sing Trancadillo."

"I am sure I don't know what you refer to," answered Fanny, coldly.

Another week passed. They sailed to Capri; they sailed to Ischia; they visited Pompeii. Bartholomew suggested these excursions. Eva too showed an almost passionate desire for constant movement, constant action. "Where shall we go to-day, mamma?" she asked every morning.

One afternoon they were strolling through an orange grove on the outskirts of Sorrento. Under the trees the ground was ploughed and rough; low stone copings, from whose interstices innumerable violets swung, ran hither and thither, and the paths followed the copings. The fruit hung thickly on the trees. Above the high wall which surrounded the place loomed the campanile of an old church. While they were strolling the bells rang the Angelus, swinging far out against the blue.

Rod, who was of the party, was absent-minded; he looked a little at the trees, but said nothing, and after a while he became absent-bodied as well, for he fell behind the others, and pursued his meditations, whatever they were, in solitude.

"He is bothered about his Italians," said Bartholomew; "he has only secured twenty so far."

Pierre joined Fanny; he had not talked with her that afternoon, and he now came to fulfil the pleasant duty. Eva, who had been left with Mademoiselle, turned round, and walking rapidly across the ploughed ground, joined Rod, who was sitting on one of the low stone walls at some distance from the party. Mademoiselle followed her, putting on her glasses as she went, in order to see her way over the heaped ridges. She held up her skirts, and gave ineffectual little leaps, always landing in the wrong spot, and tumbling up hill, as Dallas called it. "Blue," he remarked, meditatively. Every one glanced in that direction, and it was perceived that the adjective described the hue of Mademoiselle's birdlike ankles.

"For shame!" said Fanny.

But Dallas continued his observations. "Do look across," he said, after a while; "it's too funny. The French woman evidently thinks that Rod should rise, or else that Eva should be seated also. But her pantomime passes unheeded; neither Eva nor the backwoodsman is conscious of her existence."

"Eva is so fond of standing," explained Fanny. "I often say to her, 'Do sit down, child; it tires me to see you.' But Eva is never tired."

Pierre, who had a spray of orange buds in his hand, pressed it to his lips, and waved it imperceptibly towards his betrothed. "In everything she is perfect—perfect," he murmured to the pretty mother.

"Rod doesn't in the least mean to be rude," began Bartholomew.

"Oh, don't explain that importation of yours at this late day," interposed Dallas; "it isn't necessary. He is accustomed to sitting on fences probably; he belongs to the era of the singing-school."

This made Fanny angry. For as to singing-schools, there had been a time—a remote time long ago—and Dallas knew it. She had smiled in answer to Pierre's murmured rapture; she now took his arm. To punish Dallas she turned her steps—on her plump little feet in their delicate kid boots—towards the still seated Rod, with the intention of asking him (for the fifth time) to dinner. This would not only exasperate Dallas, but it would please Bartholomew at the same stroke. Two birds, etc.

When they came up to the distant three, Mademoiselle glanced at Mrs. Churchill anxiously. But in the presence of the mistress of the villa, Rod did at last lift his long length from the wall.

This seemed, however, to be because he supposed they were about to leave the grove. "Is the walk over?" he said.

Pierre looked at Eva adoringly. He gave her the spray of orange buds.

IV

A week later Fanny's daughter entered the bedroom which she shared with her mother.

From the girl's babyhood the mother had had her small white-curtained couch placed close beside her own. She could not have slept unless able at any moment to stretch out her hand and touch her sleeping child.

Fanny was in the dressing-room; hearing Eva's step, she spoke. "Do you want me, Eva?"

"Yes, please."

Fanny appeared, a vision of white arms, lace, and embroidery.

"I thought that Rosine would not be here yet," said Eva. Rosine was their maid; her principal occupation was the elaborate arrangement of Fanny's brown hair.

"No, she isn't there—if you mean in the dressing-room," answered Fanny, nodding her head towards the open door.

"I wanted to see you alone, mamma, for a moment. I wanted to tell you that I shall not marry Pierre."

Fanny, who had sunk into an easy-chair, at these words sprang up. "What is the matter? Are you ill?"

"Not in the least, mamma; I am only telling you that I cannot marry Pierre."

"You must be ill," pursued Fanny. "You have fever. Don't deny it." And anxiously she took the girl's hands. But Eva's hands were cooler than her own.

"I don't think I have any fever," replied Eva. She had been taught to answer all her mother's questions in fullest detail. "I sleep and eat as usual; I have no headache."

Fanny still looked at her anxiously. "Then if you are not ill, what can be the matter with you?"

"I have only told you, mamma, that I could not marry Pierre; it seems to me very simple."

She was so quiet that Fanny began at last to realize that she was in earnest. "My dearest, you know you like Pierre. You have told me so yourself."

"I don't like him now."

"What has he done—poor Pierre? He will explain, apologize; you may be sure of that."

"He has done nothing; I don't want him to apologize. He is as he always is. It is I who have changed."

"Oh, it is you who have changed," repeated Fanny, bewildered.

"Yes," answered Eva.

"Come and sit down and tell mamma all about it. You are tired of poor Pierre—is that it? It is very natural, he has been here so often, and stayed so long. But I will tell him that he must go away—leave Sorrento. And he shall stay away as long as you like, Eva; just as long as you like."

"Then he will stay away forever," the girl answered, calmly.

Fanny waited a moment. "Did you like Gino better? Is that it?" she said, softly, watching Eva's face.

"No."

"Thornton Stanley?"

"Oh no!"

"Dear child, explain this a little to your mother. You know I think only of your happiness," said Fanny, with tender solicitude.

Eva evidently tried to obey. "It was this morning. It came over me suddenly that I could not possibly marry him. Now or a year from now. Never." She spoke tranquilly; she even seemed indifferent. But this one decision was made.

"You know that I have given my word to the old Count," began Fanny, in perplexity.

Eva was silent.

"And everything was arranged."

Eva still said nothing. She looked about the room with wandering attention, as though this did not concern her.

"Of course I would never force you into anything," Fanny went on. "But I thought Pierre would be so congenial." In her heart she was asking herself what the young Belgian could have done. "Well, dear," she continued, with a little sigh, "you must always tell mamma everything." And she kissed her.

"Of course," Eva answered. And then she went away.

Fanny immediately rang the bell, and asked for Mademoiselle. But Mademoiselle knew nothing about it. She was overwhelmed with surprise and dismay. She greatly admired Pierre; even more she admired the old Count, whom she thought the most distinguished of men. Fanny dismissed the afflicted little woman, and sat pondering. While she was thinking, Eva re-entered.

"Mamma, I forgot to say that I should like to have you tell Pierre immediately. To-day."

Fanny was almost irritated. "You have never taken that tone before, my daughter. Have you no longer confidence in my judgment?"

"If you do not want to tell him this afternoon, it can be easily arranged, mamma; I will not come to the dinner-table; that is all. I do not wish to see him until he knows."

Pierre was to dine at the villa that evening.

"What can he have done?" thought Fanny again.

She rang for Rosine; half an hour later she was in the drawing-room. "Excuse me to every one but M. de Verneuil," she said to Angelo. She was very nervous, but she had decided upon her course: Pierre must leave Sorrento, and remain away until she herself should call him back.

"At the end of a month, perhaps even at the end of a week, she will miss you so much that I shall have to issue the summons," she said, speaking as gayly as she could, as if to make it a sort of joke. It was very hard for her, at best, to send away the frank, handsome boy.

Poor Pierre could not understand it at all. He declared over and over again that nothing he had said, nothing he had done, could possibly have offended his betrothed. "But surely you know yourself that it is impossible!" he added, clasping his hands beseechingly.

"It is a girlish freak," explained the mother. "She is so young, you know."

"But that is the very reason. I thought it was only older women who say what they wish to do in that decided way; who have freaks, as you call it," said the Belgian, his voice for a moment much older, more like the voice of a man who has spent half his life in Paris.

This was so true that Fanny was driven to a defence that scarcely anything else would have made her use.

"Eva is different from the young girls here," she said. "You must not forget that she is an American."

At last Pierre went away; he had tried to bear himself as a gentleman should; but the whole affair was a mystery to him, and he was very unhappy. He went as far as Rome, and there he waited, writing to Fanny an anxious letter almost every day.

In the meanwhile life at the villa went on; there were many excursions. Fanny's thought was that Eva would miss Pierre more during these expeditions than at other times, for Pierre had always arranged them, and he had enjoyed them so much himself that his gay spirits and his gay wit had made all the party gay. Eva, however, seemed very happy, and at length the mother could not help being touched to see how light-hearted her serious child had become, now that she was entirely free. And yet how slight the yoke had been, and how pleasant! thought Fanny. At the end of two weeks there were still no signs of the "missing" upon which she had counted. She thought that she would try the effect of briefly mentioning the banished man. "I hear from Pierre almost every day, poor fellow. He is in Rome."

"Why does he stay in Rome?" said Eva. "Why doesn't he return home?"

"I suppose he doesn't want to go so far away," answered Fanny, vaguely.

"Far away from what? Home should always be the first place," responded the young moralist. "Of course you have told him, mamma, that I shall never be his wife? That it is forever?" And she turned her gray eyes towards her mother, for the first time with a shade of suspicion in them.

"Never is a long word, Eva."

"Oh, mamma!" The girl rose. "I shall write to him myself, then."

"How you speak! Do you wish to disobey me, my own little girl?"

"No; but it is so dishonest; it is like a lie."

"My dear, trust your mother. You have changed once; you may change again."

"Not about this, mamma. Will you please write this very hour, and make an end of it?"

"You are hard, Eva. You do not think of poor Pierre at all."

"No, I do not think of Pierre."

"And is there any one else you think of? I must ask you that once more," said Fanny, drawing her daughter down beside her caressingly. Her thoughts could not help turning again towards Gino, and in her supreme love for her child she now accomplished the mental somerset of believing that on the whole she preferred the young Italian to all the liberty, all the personal consideration for herself, which had been embodied in the name of Verneuil.

"Yes, there is some one else I think of," Eva replied, in a low voice.

"In Rome?" said Fanny.

Eva made a gesture of denial that was fairly contemptuous.

Fanny's mind flew wildly from Bartholomew to Dallas, from Ferguson to Gordon-Gray: Eva had no acquaintances save those which were her mother's also.

"It is David Rod," Eva went on, in the same low tone. Then, with sudden exaltation, her eyes gleaming, "I have never seen any one like him."

It was a shock so unexpected that Mrs. Churchill drew her breath under it audibly, as one does under an actual blow. But instantly she rallied. She said to herself that she had got a romantic idealist for a daughter—that was all. She had not suspected it; she had thought of Eva as a lovely child who would develop into what she herself had been. Fanny, though far-seeing and intelligent, had not been endowed with imagination. But now that she did realize it, she should know how to deal with it. A disposition like that, full of visionary fancies, was not so uncommon as some people supposed. Horace Bartholomew should take the Floridian away out of Eva's sight forever, and the girl would soon forget him; in the meanwhile not one word that was harsh should be spoken on the subject, for that would be the worst policy of all.

This train of thought had passed through her mind like a flash. "My dear," she began, as soon as she had got her breath back, "you are right to be so honest with me. Mr. Rod has not—has not said anything to you on the subject, has he?"

"No. Didn't I tell you that he cares nothing for me? I think he despises me—I am so useless!" And then suddenly the girl began to sob; a passion of tears.

Fanny was at her wits' end; Eva had not wept since the day of her baby ills, for life had been happy to her, loved, caressed, and protected as she had been always, like a hot-house flower.

"My darling," said the mother, taking her in her arms.

But Eva wept on and on, as if her heart would break. It ended in Fanny's crying too.

Early the next morning her letter to Bartholomew was sent. Bartholomew had gone to Munich for a week. The letter begged, commanded, that he should make some pretext that would call David Rod from Sorrento at the earliest possible moment. She counted upon her fingers; four days for the letter to go and the answer to return. Those four days she would spend at Capri.

Eva went with her quietly. There had been no more conversation between mother and daughter about Rod; Fanny thought that this was best.

On the fourth day there came a letter from Bartholomew. Fanny returned to Sorrento almost gayly: the man would be gone.

But he was not gone. Tranquillized, glad to be at home again, Mrs. Churchill was enjoying her terrace and her view, when Angelo appeared at the window: "Signor Ra."

Angelo's mistress made him a peremptory sign. "Ask the gentleman to wait in the drawing-room," she said. Then crossing to Eva, who had risen, "Go round by the other door to our own room, Eva," she whispered.

The girl did not move; her face had an excited look. "But why—"

"Go, child; go."

Still Eva stood there, her eyes fixed upon the long window veiled in lace; she scarcely seemed to breathe.

Her mother was driven to stronger measures. "You told me yourself that he cared nothing for you."

A deep red rose in Eva's cheeks; she turned and left the terrace by the distant door.

The mother crossed slowly to the long window and parted the curtains. "Mr. Rod, are you there? Won't you come out? Or stay—I will join you." She entered the drawing-room and took a seat.

Rod explained that he was about to leave Sorrento; Bartholomew had summoned him so urgently that he did not like to refuse, though it was very inconvenient to go at such short notice.

"Then you leave to-morrow?" said Fanny; "perhaps to-night?"

"No; on Monday. I could not arrange my business before."

"Three days more," Fanny thought.

She talked of various matters; she hoped that some one else would come in; but, by a chance, no one appeared that day, neither Dallas, nor Ferguson, nor Gordon-Gray. "What can have become of them?" she thought, with irritation. After a while she gave an inward start; she had become conscious of a foot-fall passing to and fro behind the half-open door near her—a door which led into the dining-room. It was a very soft foot-fall upon a thick carpet, but she recognized it: it was Eva. She was there—why? The mother could think of no good reason. Her heart began to beat more quickly; for the first time in her life she did not know her child. This person walking up and down behind that door so insistently, this was not Eva. Eva was docile; this person was not docile. What would be done next? She felt strangely frightened. It was a proof of her terror that she did not dare to close the door lest it should be instantly reopened. She began to watch every word she said to Rod, who had not perceived the foot-fall. She began to be extraordinarily polite to him; she stumbled through the most irrelevant complimentary sentences. Her dread was, every minute, lest Eva should appear.

But Eva did not appear; and at last, after long lingering, Rod went away. Fanny, who had hoped to bid him a final farewell, had not dared to go through that ceremony. He said that he should come again.

When at last he was gone the mother pushed open the half-closed door. "Eva," she began. She had intended to be severe, as severe as she possibly could be; but the sight of Eva stopped her. The girl had flung herself down upon the floor, her bowed head resting upon her arms on a chair. Her attitude expressed a hopeless desolation.

"What is it?" said Fanny, rushing to her.

Eva raised her head. "He never once spoke of me—asked for me," she murmured, looking at her mother with eyes so dreary with grief that any one must have pitied her.

Her mother pitied her, though it was an angry pity, too—a non-comprehending, jealous, exasperated feeling. She sat down and gathered her child to her breast with a gesture that was almost fierce. That Eva should suffer so cruelly when she, Fanny, would have made any sacrifice to save her from it, would have died for her gladly, were it not that she was the girl's only protector—oh, what fate had come over their happy life together! She had not the heart to be stern. All she said was, "We will go away, dear; we will go away."

"No," said Eva, rising; "let me stay here. You need not be afraid."

"Of course I am not afraid," answered Fanny, gravely. "My daughter will never do anything unseemly; she has too much pride."

"I am afraid I have no pride—that is, not as you have it, mamma. Pride doesn't seem to me at all important compared with—— But of course I know that there is nothing I can do. He is perfectly indifferent. Only do not take me away again—do not."

"Why do you wish to stay?"

"Because then I can think—for three days more—that he is at least as near me as that." She trembled as she said this; there was a spot of sombre red in each cheek; her fair face looked strange amid her disordered hair.

Her mother watched her helplessly. All her beliefs, all her creed, all her precedents, the experience of her own life and her own nature even, failed to explain such a phenomenon as this. And it was her own child who was saying these things.

The next day Eva was passive. She wandered about the terrace, or sat for hours motionless staring blankly at the sea. Her mother left her to herself. She had comprehended that words were useless. She pretended to be embroidering, but in reality as she drew her stitches she was counting the hours as they passed: seventy-two hours; forty-eight hours. Would he ever be gone?

"SHE SAT DOWN AND GATHERED HER CHILD TO HER BREAST"
"SHE SAT DOWN AND GATHERED HER CHILD TO HER BREAST"

On the second day, in the afternoon, she discovered that Eva had disappeared. The girl had been on the terrace with Mademoiselle; Mademoiselle had gone to her room for a moment, and when she returned her pupil could not be found. She had not passed through the drawing-room, where Fanny was sitting with her pretended industry; nor through the other door, for Rosine was at work there, and had seen nothing of her. There remained only the rock stairway to the beach. Mademoiselle ran down it swiftly: no one. But there was a small boat not far off, she said. Fanny, who was near-sighted, got the glass. In a little boat with a broad sail there were two figures; one was certainly David Rod, and the other—yes, the other was Eva. There was a breeze, the boat was rapidly going westward round the cliffs; in two minutes more it was out of sight.

Fanny wrung her hands. The French woman, to whom the event wore a much darker hue than it did to the American mother, turned yellowly pale.

At this moment Horace Bartholomew came out on the terrace; uneasy, for Fanny's missive had explained nothing, he had followed his letter himself. "What is it?" he said, as he saw the agitation of the two women.

"Your friend—yours—the man you brought here, has Eva with him at this moment out on the bay!" said Fanny, vehemently.

"Well, what of that? You must look at it with Punta Palmas eyes, Fanny; at Punta Palmas it would be an ordinary event."

"But my Eva is not a Punta Palmas girl, Horace Bartholomew!"

"She is as innocent as one, and I'll answer for Rod. Come, be sensible, Fanny. They will be back before sunset, and no one in Sorrento—if that is what is troubling you so—need be any the wiser."

"You do not know all," said Fanny. "Oh, Horace—I must tell somebody—she fancies she cares for that man!" She wrung her hands again. "Couldn't we follow them? Get a boat."

"It would take an hour. And it would be a very conspicuous thing to do. Leave them alone—it's much better; I tell you I'll answer for Rod. Fancies she cares for him, does she? Well, he is a fine fellow; on the whole, the finest I know."

The mother's eyes flashed through her tears. "This from you?"

"I can't help it; he is. Of course you do not think so. He has got no money; he has never been anywhere that you call anywhere; he doesn't know anything about the only life you care for nor the things you think important. All the same, he is a man in a million. He is a man—not a puppet."

Gentle Mrs. Churchill appeared for the moment transformed. She looked as though she could strike him. "Never mind your Quixotic ideas. Tell me whether he is in love with Eva; it all depends upon that."

"I don't know, I am sure," answered Bartholomew. He began to think. "I can't say at all; he would conceal it from me."

"Because he felt his inferiority. I am glad he has that grace."

"He wouldn't be conscious of any inferiority save that he is poor. It would be that, probably, if anything; of course he supposes that Eva is rich."

"Would to Heaven she were!" said the mother. "Added to every other horror of it, poverty, miserable poverty, for my poor child!" She sat down and hid her face.

"It may not be as bad as you fear, nor anything like it. Do cheer up a little, Fanny. When Eva comes back, ten to one you will find that nothing at all has happened—that it has been a mere ordinary excursion. And I promise you I will take Rod away with me to-morrow."

Mrs. Churchill rose and began to pace to and fro, biting her lips, and watching the water. Mademoiselle, who was still hovering near, she waved impatiently away. "Let no one in," she called to her.

There seemed, indeed, to be nothing else to do, as Bartholomew had said, save to wait. He sat down and discussed the matter a little.

Fanny paid no attention to what he was saying. Every now and then broken phrases of her own burst from her: "How much good will her perfect French and Italian, her German, Spanish, and even Russian, do her down in that barbarous wilderness?"—"In her life she has never even buttoned her boots. Do they think she can make bread?"—"And there was Gino. And poor Pierre." Then, suddenly, "But it shall not be!"

"I have been wondering why you did not take that tone from the first," said Bartholomew. "She is very young. She has been brought up to obey you implicitly. It would be easy enough, I should fancy, if you could once make up your mind to it."

"Make up my mind to save her, you mean," said the mother, bitterly. She did not tell him that she was afraid of her daughter. "Should you expect me to live at Punta Palmas?" she demanded, contemptuously, of her companion.

"That would depend upon Rod, wouldn't it?" answered Bartholomew, rather unamiably. He was tired—he had been there an hour—of being treated like a door-mat.

At this Fanny broke down again, and completely. For it was only too true; it would depend upon that stranger, that farmer, that unknown David Rod, whether she, the mother, should or should not be with her own child.

A little before sunset the boat came into sight again round the western cliffs. Fanny dried her eyes. She was very pale. Little Mademoiselle, rigid with anxiety, watched from an upper window. Bartholomew rose to go down to the beach to receive the returning fugitives. "No," said Fanny, catching his arm, "don't go; no one must know before I do—no one." So they waited in silence.

Down below, the little boat had rapidly approached. Eva had jumped out, and was now running up the rock stairway; she was always light-footed, but to her mother it seemed that the ascent took an endless time. At length there was the vision of a young, happy, rushing figure—rushing straight to Fanny's arms. "Oh, mamma, mamma," the girl whispered, seeing that there was no one there but Bartholomew, "he loves me! He has told me so! he has told me so!"

For an instant the mother drew herself away. Eva, left alone, and mindful of nothing but her own bliss, looked so radiant with happiness that Bartholomew (being a man) could not help sympathizing with her. "You will have to give it up," he said to Fanny, significantly. Then he took his hat and went away.

Fifteen minutes later his place was filled by David Rod.

"Ah! you have come. I must have a few words of conversation with you, Mr. Rod," said Fanny, in an icy tone. "Eva, leave us now."

"Oh no, mamma, not now; never again, I hope," answered the girl. She spoke with secure confidence; her eyes were fixed upon her lover's face.

"Do you call this honorable behavior, Mr. Rod?" Fanny began. She saw that Eva would not go.

"Why, I hope so," answered Rod, surprised. "I have come at once, as soon as I possibly could, Mrs. Churchill (I had to take the boat back first, you know), to tell you that we are engaged; it isn't an hour old yet—is it, Eva?" He looked at Eva smilingly, his eyes as happy as her own.

"It is the custom to ask permission," said Fanny, stiffly.

"I have never heard of the custom, then; that is all I can say," answered Rod, with good-natured tranquillity, still looking at the girl's face, with its rapt expression, its enchanting joy.

"Please to pay attention; I decline to consent, Mr. Rod; you cannot have my daughter."

"Mamma—" said Eva, coming up to her.

"No, Eva; if you will remain here—which is most improper—you will have to hear it all. You are so much my daughter's inferior, Mr. Rod, that I cannot, and I shall not, consent."

At the word "inferior," a slight shock passed over Eva from head to foot. She went swiftly to her lover, knelt down and pressed her lips to his brown hand, hiding her face upon it.

He raised her tenderly in his arms, and thus embraced, they stood there together, confronting the mother—confronting the world.

Fanny put out her hands with a bitter cry. "Eva!"

The girl ran to her, clung to her. "Oh, mamma, I love you dearly. But you must not try to separate me from David. I could not leave him—I never will."

"Let us go in, to our own room," said the mother, in a broken voice.

"Yes; but speak to David first, mamma."

Rod came forward and offered his arm. He was sorry for the mother's grief, which, however, in such intensity as this, he could not at all understand. But though he was sorry, he was resolute, he was even stern; in his dark beauty, his height and strength, he looked indeed, as Bartholomew had said, a man.

At the sight of his offered arm Mrs. Churchill recoiled; she glanced all round the terrace as though to get away from it; she even glanced at the water; it almost seemed as if she would have liked to take her child and plunge with her to the depths below. But one miserable look at Eva's happy, trustful eyes still watching her lover's face cowed her; she took the offered arm. And then Rod went with her, supporting her gently into the house, and through it to her own room, where he left her with her daughter. That night the mother rose from her sleepless couch, lit a shaded taper, and leaving it on a distant table, stole softly to Eva's side. The girl was in a deep slumber, her head pillowed on her arm. Fanny, swallowing her tears, gazed at her sleeping child. She still saw in the face the baby outlines of years before, her mother's eye could still distinguish in the motionless hand the dimpled fingers of the child. The fair hair, lying on the pillow, recalled to her the short flossy curls of the little girl who had clung to her skirts, who had had but one thought—"mamma."

"FANNY PUT OUT HER HANDS WITH A BITTER CRY"
"FANNY PUT OUT HER HANDS WITH A BITTER CRY"

"What will her life be now? What must she go through, perhaps—what pain, privation—my darling, my own little child!"

The wedding was to take place within the month; Rod said that he could not be absent longer from his farm. Fanny, breaking her silence, suggested to Bartholomew that the farm might be given up; there were other occupations.

"I advise you not to say a word of that sort to Rod," Bartholomew answered. "His whole heart is in that farm, that colony he has built up down there. You must remember that he was brought up there himself, or rather came up. It's all he knows, and he thinks it the most important thing in life; I was going to say it's all he cares for, but of course now he has added Eva."

Pierre came once. He saw only the mother.

When he left her he went round by way of the main street of Sorrento in order to pass a certain small inn. His carriage was waiting to take him back to Castellamare, but there was some one he wished to look at first. It was after dark; he could see into the lighted house through the low uncurtained windows, and he soon came upon the tall outline of the young farmer seated at a table, his eyes bent upon a column of figures. The Belgian surveyed him from head to foot slowly. He stood there gazing for five minutes. Then he turned away. "That, for Americans!" he murmured in French, snapping his fingers in the darkness. But there was a mist in his boyish eyes all the same.

The pink villa witnessed the wedding. Fanny never knew how she got through that day. She was calm; she did not once lose her self-control.

They were to sail directly for New York from Naples, and thence to Florida; the Italian colonists were to go at the same time.

"Mamma comes next year," Eva said to everybody. She looked indescribably beautiful; it was the radiance of a complete happiness, like a halo.

By three o'clock they were gone, they were crossing the bay in the little Naples steamer. No one was left at the villa with Fanny—it was her own arrangement—save Horace Bartholomew.

"She won't mind being poor," he said, consolingly, "she won't mind anything—with him. It is one of those sudden, overwhelming loves that one sometimes sees; and after all, Fanny, it is the sweetest thing life offers."

"And the mother?" said Fanny.