SIX SUNNY MONTHS.

SIX SUNNY MONTHS.BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC.CHAPTERVIII.AN ARRIVAL.IfMr. Vane and the Signora felt any difficulty in meeting each other the next morning, it was soon over.Ce n’est que le premier pas qui coûte, and that one step brought them into the familiar path again, almost as though they had never left it. Almost, but not quite; for the entire unconsciousness of Mr. Vane’s manner impressed the lady strongly. It did not give her a new idea of him, but it emphasized the impressions she had for some time been receiving. She had never believed him to be so careless and indifferent as he often appeared to be, but it had grown upon her, little by little, that under that calm, and evennonchalant, exterior was hidden an immense self-control and watchfulness; that he could ignore things when he chose so perfectly that it was difficult to believe he had not forgotten them; and that, instead of being one of the most unobserving of men, he was, in reality, aware of everything that went on about him, seeing much which escaped ordinary lookers-on.Such a disposition in a person in whose honesty we have not entire confidence is disconcerting, and increases our distrust of them; but it excites in us a greater interest when we know them to be honest and friendly. If they have had sorrows, we look at them with a tenderer sympathy, searching for signs of a suffering which they will notexpress; if they have revealed a peculiar affection for us, we feel either sweetly protected or painfully haunted by an attention which seldom betrays itself, and which will not be evaded.The Signora could not have said clearly whether she was pleased or displeased. Mr. Vane had mistaken the nature of her sympathy, she thought, and, believing her to be attached to him, had spoken from gratitude; and though the conviction hurt her pride, she could not feel any resentment for a mistake kindly made on his part, and promptly corrected on hers. The only wise course was to put the matter completely out of her mind, as he seemed to have done, and to secure and enjoy the friendship she had no fear of his withdrawing.Isabel was greatly exercised in her mind that morning on the subject of insects.“I made up my mind in the middle of the night what I should do if I ever built a house in Italy,” she said. “I should have every stick and stone on the place carried away, a deep trench dug all around the land, and a high wall built all around the trench. Then I should have the whole surface of the ground covered with combustible material, and a fire kindled over it. When that had burned a day or two, I should have cellars, wells, drains, everything that had to beexcavated, made thoroughly, and the garden-plot well turned over. Then I should have a second conflagration, covering everything. Next would come the house-building. For that every stone should be washed and fumigated before it was brought in at the gate, and all the earth and gravel should be baked in a furnace, and every tree and shrub, and cart and donkey and workman, should be washed seven times; and finally, when the house should be finished as to the stone-work and plaster, I would have it drenched inside and out with spirits of wine, and set fire to. By taking those precautions I believe that one might have a place free of fleas. What do you think, Signora?”“My dear, I think you would have had your labor for your pains,” was the reply. “These little creatures would hop over your walls, come in snugly hidden in your furniture, ride grandly in on the horses and in the coaches of your visitors, and even enter triumphantly on your own person. They are invincible. One must have patience.”“I would continue to burn the place over, furniture and all, till I had routed them,” the young woman declared. “I believe it could be done. I would have patience, but it should be the patience of continual resistance, not of submission. I would not give up though I should reduce the place to ashes.”Mr. Vane asked his daughter if she ever heard of such a process as biting off one’s nose to spite one’s face; and then he told her a very pathetic story of a man and a flea: “Once there was a man who was greatly tormented by a flea which he could never catch. In vain he searched his garments and the house. The insect hopped from place to place, but always returnedas soon as the search was over. At length, in a fit of impatience, the man hit upon a desperate project, which he did not doubt would succeed. He went softly to the seashore and, after waiting till the enemy was plainly to be felt between his shoulders, flung himself headlong into the water. But, alas! engrossed by the one thought of vengeance, he had not calculated his own peril. The waters drew him away from shore in spite of his struggles, and just as they were closing over him, with his last glimpse of earth, he saw the flea, which had hopped from him on to a passing plank, floating safely to shore again.”“The moral is—” Mr. Vane was concluding, when his daughter interrupted him.“I maintain that the man conquered!” she exclaimed. “That flea could never bite him again.”This uncomfortable talk was carried on in the house, which naturally suggested it. But when they went out of doors, they left it behind them. The quaint, zigzag streets; the countless number of odd nooks in every direction; the narrow vistas here and there between close rows of houses, where a wedge of distant mountain, as blue as a lump of lapis-lazuli, seemed to be thrust between the very walls, or where the rough gray ribbon of the street became a ribbon of flowery green, silvering off into the horizon, with a city showing on it far away no larger than a daisy; the people in the streets, and all about, whose simple naturalness was more astonishing than the most unnatural behavior could have been—all these kept their eyes and minds alert.In the midst of the town stands the church, the houses clustering about it like children about their mother’s knees. Some little childrenwere playing on the steps outside; inside, a group of women, with white handkerchiefs on their heads, were kneeling about a confessional, waiting their turns. One of them, who had confessed, came slowly away, and went toward the high altar, touching here and there with a small staff she carried, her eyes looking straight ahead.The Signora stepped quickly forward to remove a chair from her path. “You are blind!” she whispered pitifully.The old woman smiled, and turned toward the voice a face of serious sweetness, as she made the reply ofSt.Clara: “She is not blind who sees God!”She reached the altar-railing, and knelt there to wait for the Mass. Where she knelt the one sunbeam that found its way into the church so early fell over her. Feeling its warmth like a gentle touch, she lifted her face to it and smiled again.The children, weary of their play, came in and wandered about the church. One, finding its mother among the penitents, went to lean on her lap. She smoothed its pretty curls absently with one hand, while the other slipped bead after bead of her chaplet, her lips moving rapidly. Another, seeing the hand of the priest resting on the door of the confessional, just under the curtain, went to kiss it, standing on tiptoe, and straining up to reach the fingers with its baby mouth. A third, seeing some one near it kneel before the altar, made a liliputian genuflection, and went down on its knees in the middle of the church, a mere dot in that space, and remained there looking innocently about, uncomprehending but unquestioning. Another dreamed along the side of the church, looking at the familiar pictures,and presently, climbing with some difficulty the steps of one of the altars, seated itself and began softly to stroke the cheeks of a marble cherub that supported the altar-table.If a company of baby angels had come in, they would not have made less noise nor done less harm; perhaps, would not have done more good.“How peaceful it is!” Mr. Vane exclaimed as they went out into the air again. “How heavenly peaceful!”They saw only women and children on their way down through the town. Some of the men had gone off in the night to Rome, carrying wine in those carts of theirs, with the awning slung like a galley-sail over the driver’s seat, and the cluster of bells atop, each tinkling in a different tone, and the little white dog keeping watch over the barrels while the man dozed. Others had gone at day-dawn to work in the Campagna, and might be seen from the town moving, as small as spiders, among the vines or in the gardens.Just below the great piazza, at the entrance of the town, beside the dip of the road into the hollow betweenMonte CompatriandMonte San Sylvestro, a long, tiled roof was visible supported on arches. They leaned over the parapet supporting the road, and watched for a little while the lively scene below. All the space beneath this roof was an immense tank of water, or fountain, as it was called, divided into square compartments. Around these stood forty or fifty women washing. They soaped and dipped their clothes in the constantly-changing water, and beat them on the wide stone border of the fountain, working leisurely, and chatting with each other. Thewhite handkerchiefs on their heads, and, now and then, a bit of bright drapery on their shoulders, shone out of the shadow made by the roof and the piers supporting it, and the rich green of that sheltered nook between the hills. It was, in fact, the town wash-tub, and this was the town wash-day. In this place the women washed the year round, in the open air, and with cold water, spreading their clothes out to dry on the grass and bushes.The travellers went upMonte San Sylvestro, gathering flowers as they went. The path was rough and wild, winding to and fro among the bushes as it climbed, and hidden, from time to time, by tall trees. Half way up they met a man with a herd of goats rushing and tumbling down the steep way. A little farther on, at a turn of the road, was a large shrine holding a crucifix. The place seemed to be an absolute solitude, but the withered flowers drooping from the wire screen, and the sod, worn to dust, at the foot of the step, showed that faith and love had passed that way, and stopped in passing. Near this shrine was a protruding ledge, from under which the gravel had dropped away or been dug away, leaving a sort of cave. The place needed only a gray-bearded old man clad in rags, and bending over an open book, an hour-glass before him, and perhaps a lion lying at his feet. Or one might have placed there the Magdalen, with her long hair trailing in the sand, and her woful eyes looking off into the distant east, as she gazed across the blue ocean from her cave on the coast of France. There was still faith enough in this region to have honored and protected such a penitent.The three women gathered some green to go with their flowers, clearedaway all the withered stems and leaves, and wrote in pink and white and blue around the edge of the screen. When they had done all that they could well reach, Mr. Vane finished for them by writing last, over the head of the crucifix, the word that in reality came first. Then they went on, leaving the symbol of all that Heaven could do for earth encircled by the expression of all that earth can do for Heaven—“Credo, Spero, Amo, Ringrazio, Pento.” They wrote these words in flowers, Bianca weaving a verdant Hope at the right hand, Isabel a white Thanksgiving at the left, and the Signora placing a rose-red Love and Penitence under the feet. Over the head Mr. Vane had set in blue the word of Faith.The summit of the mountain was crowned with the convent and church ofSt.Sylvester; but the buildings extended quite to the edge of the platform on the eastern side, and the fine view was from the gardens on the west side, and, of course, inaccessible to ladies. They could only obtain glimpses over the tops of trees that climbed from below, and through the trunks of trees that pressed close to the corners of the stone barriers. No person was visible but a monk in a brown robe and a broad-brimmed hat, who lingered near a moment, as if to give them an opportunity to speak to him if they wished, then entered a long court leading to the convent door, and disappeared under the portico.A perfect silence reigned. They heard nothing but their own steps on the grassy pavement. The town ofMonte Compatri, seen through the trees on the other height, looked more like a gray rock than a city. Not a sign of life was visible from it. The glimpses they caught of theCampagna had seemed fragments of a vast green solitude where grass had long overgrown the traces of men. No smallest cloud gave life or motion to the steady blue overhead; no song of bird wove a silver link between familiar scenes and that solemn retreat. The soul, stripped of its veiling cares and interests, was like Moses on the mountain, face to face with God. History, mythology, poetry—they were not! The buzzing of these golden bees that made the brow of Tusculum their hive was inaudible and forgotten. On this height was a station-house of eternity, and the electric current of the other world flowed through its blue and silent air.“It seems to me one should prepare one’s mind before going there,” Bianca said, looking back from the foot of the mountain, after they had descended. They had scarcely spoken a word going down.The impression made on them was, indeed, so strong that they scarcely observed anything about them for several hours; and it was only when they were going down to Frascati again in the afternoon that they roused themselves from their silence.“We shall have time to go into Villa Aldobrandini a little while,” the Signora said, looking at her watch. “The train does not start for more than an hour. We can send the man on to the station with our bags, and walk down ourselves. Of course all these villas have very nearly the same view, but this is the finest of all.”They had time for a short visit only, but their guide made the most of it. Going round one of the circling avenues, dark with ancient ilex-trees, she turned into a cross-road that led directly to the upper centre of the villa, where the cascadesbegan. First, from under a tomb-like door in the side of a mound, flowed a swift ribbon of water between stone borders. It slanted with the hill, and flashed along silent in the sunshine, eager to leap through the mouth of the great mask below, to scatter its spray over carven stone and a hundred flowers.They followed the cascades down to the lower front, with its niches, statues, chapel, and chambers, and the noblecasinofacing it.“Every story of the house, as you go up,” the Signora said, “brings you on a level with a new cascade, and from the topmost room you look into the heart of the upper thicket, where you might imagine yourself unseen. Indeed, splendid as these scenes are, there is, to me, a constant sense of discomfort in that frequent appearance of solitude where solitude is not. There seems to be no nook, however apparently remote, which is not perfectly overlooked from some almost invisible watch-tower. It may be necessary, but the suggestion is of suspicion and espionage.”They left the villa by the front avenue and lawn, walking through grass and flowers ankle deep, and gathering handfuls of dear, familiar pennyroyal that they found growing all about.When they reached the station there was yet a little time to wait, and they stood in the western windows and looked off to the distant ridges that showed their dark edges against intervening layers of silvery mist. They were ridges of jewels, marked thickly with spires, towers, and palaces. At the left the dome of the world’s temple was visible, making everything else of its sort puny, and next it, like the outline of a forest against the sky, the Quirinalstretched its royal front. All floated in that delicate mist that, from the distance, always veils the Campagna, as if the innumerable ghosts of the past became luminous when so seen, evading for ever the nearer spectator.Framing this distant picture, a hill of olives at one side of the station-house sloped to a hill of vines at the other, and the railroad track, set in roses, curved round in the narrow strip of land between them.The Signora, putting her arm around Bianca, and pointing to one of these ridges, whispered in her ear: “What does my darling think that is—the two dark spots shaped like two thimbles, and about as large, and the something that might be a lead-pencil standing up between them? What blessedcampanileand twincupoledo you wish them to be?”“Oh! I was searching for them,” the girl exclaimed, and kissed her hand to the far-away basilica. “We must go there a few minutes this evening,” she added—“go up the steps, at least, if it should be too late to go in.”They started, and went trailing along through the enchanted land, happy to return to the city that already seemed to them like home, and, having learnt some landmarks in their outward passage, added to the number of their acquisitions in returning. The Signora indicated the principal tombs and named the aqueducts. “There are the Claudian and Marcian, side by side, galloping over the plain like a pair of coursers, each bringing a lake in its veins to quench the thirst of Rome. SixtusV., who built our chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, Bianca, used those Claudian arches to bring a new stream in when the old one failed. It is called AquaFelice. His name was Felice Peretti.”“Stia felice!” said Bianca, smiling at the grand old arches.“In what a circle water goes,” she added after a moment, “and what a beautiful circle!—down in the rain, running in the river, where the wheel touches the earth, rising on the sunbeams, running in clouds, where the wheel touches the sky, dropping in rain again, and so on round and round.”“Apropos of SixtusV.,” the Signora said to Mr. Vane, “see how the church recognizes and rewards merit. It is, in fact, the only true republic. That wonderful man was a swineherd in Montalto when he was a boy, and Cardinal of Montalto when he was a man, and he died one of the most brilliant popes that ever wore the tiara. One cannot help wondering what the boy Felice thought of in those days when he watched the swine, and if ever a vision came to him of kings kneeling to kiss his feet. And, more yet, I wonder what thoughts the mother had of his future when she watched over her sleeping child, or looked after him when he went out to his day’s task. He could not have been so great but that his mother gave the first impulse. One does not gather figs of thistles.”“I agree with you about the mother,” Mr. Vane replied cordially. “I don’t believe any man ever accomplished much of real worth in life without his mother having set him on the track of it. Sometimes a noble mother has a son who does not do justice to her example and teaching. But even then, if her duty has been fully done, she may be sure that he is the better for it, though not so good as he should be. I am sure I owe it to my mother that, though my life has notbenefited the world much, my sins have been rather of omission than of commission. Come to think of it, I have never done her any particular credit; but I am happy to be able to say that I have never done her any great discredit.”While he spoke, his face half-turned toward the window, his manner more energetic than was usual with him, the large blue eyes of the Signora rested on him with an expression of grave kindness and interest. When he ended, she leaned slightly toward him, smiling, and tossed him a rose she had drawn from her belt, repeating Bianca’s exclamation: “Stia felice!”His fingers closed on the stem of the rose which had touched his hand, and he held it, but did not turn his face, seeming to wait for her to go on.“You should read Padre Ventura,” she said, “though, indeed, you have less need than most men. I would like to put hisLa Donna Cattolicainto the hands of every Catholic—yes, and of every Protestant. I would like the Woman’s Rights women, and those who think that Christianity and the church have degraded us, and some Catholics too, to learn fromSt.Chrysostom,St.Jerome, and Gregory the Great what estimate Christian women should be held in. It would do them good to read the works of this eloquent priest, who speaks with authority, and ennobles himself in honoring the sisters of the Queen of angels. Padre Ventura must have had a beautiful soul. I fancy that his ashes even must be whiter than the ashes of most men. I always judge men’s characters by their estimate of women, and what they seek in women by what they say is to be found in them.”“This author is dead, then?” Mr. Vane remarked, looking attentively at the Signora in his turn.“Yes. He died years before I had ever heard his name. When you have read something of his, you may like to visit his tomb inSt.Andrea delle Valle. The stone over his sepulchre is in the pavement, about half way up the nave, and there’s a fine monument in the transept on the epistle side. I wish every Christian woman who visits Rome would drop a flower on the stone that covers all that was earthly of that man, and remember for a moment the place he assigns her in her home and in the world. ‘The man,’ he says, ‘is the king of the family; the woman is the priest.’”She was silent, pursuing the subject mentally, then added: “He says so many beautiful things. Describing the different kinds of courage with which the Christian martyrs and certain celebrated pagans met death, he speaks of one as ‘the modesty and humility that throws itself into the arms of hope, to rest there,’ and the other as ‘the pride that immolates itself to desperation, in order to lose itself there.’ One he calls ‘the sublime of virtue,’ and the other ‘the sublime of vice.’ He had mentioned Socrates and Cato in the connection.”They had reached the station while this talk was going on, and, coming out into the piazza, separated there, the Signora and Bianca coming down by one of the fine new streets to pay a visit to their basilica on the way home. They found the door just closed, it being half an hour beforeAve Maria; but it was a pleasure to walk a while on the long platform at the head of the steps, bathed in the red gold of the setting sun, that gilded, but did not scorch; to look up at the fringe ofpink flowers growing in spikes at the top of the façade, and at the flocks of little gray birds that flew about among them; and to glance up or down the streets that stretched off like rays from the sun, and then to stroll slowly homeward through the lounging, motley crowd.They met Mr. Vane and Isabel at the door.“Did you think we also might not visit a church?” Isabel said. “I invited papa to go intoSt.Bernard’s, and, though they were about closing, they kept open ten minutes for us. I am not sure but I may adopt that church as my favorite. It is not too large. The congregations are orderly, and all attend to one service; and, besides, I like a rotunda. If I should go there, papa, you must side with me, that the house may be equally divided.”“I’m not sure I like those cherubic churches, all head and no nave,” Mr. Vane replied. “The basilica, being modelled on the human body, has a more human feeling.”The door opened before they rang, and the servants, having been on the watch, welcomed them with smiling faces, kissing the hand of the Signora. It was impossible not to believe in, and be touched by, their sincerity and affection, which expressed themselves, not in looks and words alone, but in actions. The house showed plainly, by its exquisite cleanliness, that the absence of the mistress had not been a holiday for them; and they had prepared everything they could to please her, even to filling all the smaller vases with her favorite flowers.“You haven’t been spending your money for violets, you extravagant children!” she exclaimed.They had been watching to see if she would notice them, and weredelighted with her surprise and pleasure.No, they had not spent money, but only time and strength. They had gathered the flowers themselves in Villa Borghese.“I do not take on myself to decide great social questions,” the Signora said, as they sat talking over their supper. “I could not decide them if I would. But this I must think: that, in most cases, little happiness is to be found for people except in the position in which they were born. Look at these two good creatures who serve us. Their parents before them were servants, and they do not expect or wish to be anything more. They want the rights their claim to which they understand perfectly—fair wages, not too hard work, and an occasional holiday. They know that the fatigues of the great, the wealthy, and the ambitious are greater than theirs, though of a different sort. If wealth were to drop upon them, they would grasp it, no doubt, but it would embarrass them. They would never strive for it. Do you know, I find their position dignified, even when they black my shoes. It’s a nicer thing to do than toadying for fine friends, or striving for place, or gnawing one’s heart out with envy.”Mr. Vane smiled slightly.“How is it about your swineherd, who changed his rough straw hat for a triple crown, and had the royalty and nobility of centuries come to kiss the foot that once hadn’t even a shoe to it?”“Oh!” she replied, “the church is the beginning of the kingdom of heaven on earth, and the meek and the poor in spirit possess it already. Besides, I always make exception of those whom God has especially endowed with gifts of nature orgrace, or with both. Besides, again, this man did not seek greatness; it was conferred on him.”Isabel felt called on to show her colors.“America for ever!” she said. “Europe will do very well for the great, and for those who are willing to remain small; but inmycountry there’s a fair field for everybody. Everybody there is born to as high a position as he can work his way to, and his destiny is not in the beginning of his life, but in the end of it. We are like Adams and Eves new-made, and dominion is given us over the garden of the new world.”She paused for breath, and the Signora applauded. “Brava! I am willing you should defeat me. I will call America not only the garden, but the nursery-garden, of the new world, if you like. Long live your seedlings!”“How would you like it,” the girl went on, rather red in the cheeks—“how would you like it, if you had been born in some very humble position in life, instead of in the position of a lady, to have some one tell you not to try to rise, but to stay where you were? Just take it to yourself.”“If I had been so born I should have been a different sort of person, and cannot say how I should have felt,” the Signora replied tranquilly. “If I had been a product of generations of obedience, instead of generations of command, do not you see that the marriages would have been different, the habits, the traditions, the education, everything but the immortal spark and the common human nature? Or, if I had been like what I am now, I think I should have looked for, and found, the beauties and pleasures in my path.” She had been speakingvery quietly, but here she drew herself up a little, and a slight color rose to her face as she went on: “I have never striven for any of those things the chase of which seems so mean to me. It has never occurred to me that I might be honored by any association, except with a person either very good or very highly gifted by nature. The only rank which impresses me is that in the church. For the rest—you have heard the expression, ‘a distinction without a difference.’”Isabel gave a puzzled sigh. “I never could understand you,” she said, a little impatiently. “Sometimes you seem to me the haughtiest of women; sometimes I think you not half proud enough. One moment you seem to be a red republican, the next an aristocrat. I can’t make out what you really are. You graduate your bows to an inch, according to the rank you salute. I’ve seen your eyes flash lightning at a person for being too familiar toward you; and then I find you talking about the rights of the people almost like a communist.”The Signora was crumbling a bit of bread while she listened, and did not look up in answering: “I am quite ashamed of having made myself the subject of conversation for so long a time. Excuse me! Shall we go out to theloggiafor a little while? It is very warm here.”“Permit me!” Mr. Vane interposed. He had been looking at his daughter with great displeasure. “I would say, Isabel, that when you shall have thought and learned more, you will, I hope, understand the Signora better than you do now, and will try to imitate the justice which can give to all their due, and not rob Peter to pay Paul. Moreover, I would remind you that an intrusive familiarity is nota right of any one, even to an inferior. And now, Signora, shall we go to theloggia?”Perhaps it was because she had never before been so sharply criticised to her face; but the Signora had, certainly, never before known how pleasant it is to be defended. This pleasure showed itself in her manner as they went out. She usually held herself rather erect, and had an air of composure which might easily be called pride; but now there was a slight drooping of the head and bending of the form which gave her an appearance of softness, as of one who droops content under a protecting shadow. It was a softness which she, perhaps, needed.They heard the door-bell ringing as they went up theloggiasteps, and presently an exclamation in Isabel’s clear voice. She had not followed them, they now perceived, being a little displeased or hurt at the reproof to which she had been subjected.“Who can have come?” said the Signora, listening. “It seems to be some one whom Isabel knows.”Bianca stood at the railing and looked intently at the windows of thesala, faintly lighted from the room beyond. Two figures passed through the dimness and disappeared. They might be coming to theloggia, or they might be going to the sofa under that picture of Penelope and Ulysses—the Signora and Mr. Vane, both a little preoccupied, did not notice or care which. If any one wished to see them, he could come to them.Bianca, alone, stood looking steadily. The full moon, shining in her face, had showed it for one moment as red as a rose; but as the minutes passed, that lovely color faded, growing paler, till itwas whiter than the light that veiled it, sparkling like silver on its beautiful outlines. Where was the sweet confidence that had been growing up in her heart for the last few weeks? Gone like a cloud-house built on a cloud. She was terrified at the fear and pain that had taken the place of it, and began to lose sight of the cause in trembling at the magnitude of the effect.“It is surely wrong that anything in the world should make me feel so,” she murmured. “What have I been doing? I must have thought of this too much, and now is come my punishment. Here in Rome, where we shall stay but a few months, I ought to have given all my mind and heart to religion. It is a shame that I have not. I do not deserve the privilege of being here.”She strove to gather about her mind the sacred thoughts and associations which the Christian finds in the heart of the Christian world, to dwarf with the grand interests of eternity the passing interests of time, and she was in some measure successful, to the extent, at least, of inspiring herself with resolution, if not with peace.“Oh! how terrible is life,” she said, looking upward, as if to escape the sight of it. “How it catches us unawares, sometimes, and wrings the blood out of our hearts!” The prayer that always rose to her lips in any necessity, “We fly to thy patronage,” escaped them now; and then she swiftly and firmly read to herself her lesson: “I will be friendly and gentle toward him. I will neither seek him nor shrink from him, nor show any foolish consciousness, if I can help it; and I will not be angry with Isabel. If he should care for me in the wayI have thought, he will come every step of the way for me; if he should not, I shall not win either respect or affection by putting myself in his way. For the rest, I will trust my future with God.”“Bianca,” said her sister’s voice at her elbow, “who do you think has come?”Whatever might happen, it was a pleasure to meet him, and there was no effort or embarrassment in her greeting. That moment of pain and recollection had lifted her merely earthly affection so that it became touched with the serious sweetness of heavenly charity, as the mist, lifting at morning from the bosom of the river, where it has hung through the dark hours, grows silver in the upper light. She held out her hand and smiled. “You are welcome! Papa, here is an old friend of ours.”The Signora was instantly all attention. Her own affairs were quite forgotten in those of her beloved young favorite. She was eager to see this man, to watch him, to understand him. If he should suit her and be good to Bianca, there was nothing she would not do for him; if he should be lacking in principle, or in kindness to her darling, woe to him! She would most certainly—And here, just as she was meditating in what way she could most fittingly punish him without hurting any one else, he turned, at Mr. Vane’s introduction, and saluted her with a smile and glance that won her completely. It was not the meeting of two strangers. He had thought of his lady’s guardian with almost as much interest, perhaps, as she had thought of her friend’s lover, and had expected to find in her either a help or a hindrance. Her searching regard hadnot disconcerted, then, but reassured him rather.The Signora soon made an excuse to go into the house a moment, and left the Vanes and their visitor to renew their intercourse without interruption, and go through the mutual questioning of friends reunited after many and varied experiences. Returning quietly after a while, she stood in a corner of theloggiaand observed them. Mr. Vane sat with a daughter at either side, and Marion stood opposite them, leaning back against the railing and talking. The moon shone in his face and flowed down his form, investing both, or revealing in both, a beauty inexpressibly noble and graceful. One might say that he looked as if he had been formed to music. A gold bronze color in his hair showed where the light struck fully, a flash of dusky blue came now and then from under his thick eye-lashes, and when he smiled one knew that his teeth were perfect and snowy white. His voice, too, was very pleasant, with a sound of laughter in it when he talked gayly—a laughter like that we fancy in a brook. It was as though his thoughts and fancies sparkled as they passed into the air.“He is certainly fascinating,” the Signora thought. “I hope he does not try to be so.”He did not. No one could be more unconscious of the effect produced by what was personal in his talk than Marion. If he sometimes appeared, while talking, almost to forget his company, it was not because he thought of himself, but because he was absorbed in his subject. He saw plainly before his eyes that which he described, and he made others see it. Bright, animated, varied, passing, not abruptly, but with the grace of a bird thatswims through the air, and alights for a moment, now here, now there, on a tree, a shrine, a house-top, a mountain-top, a window-ledge with an inside view, he carried his listeners along with him, charmed and unconscious of time. He knew that they were pleased, but gave the credit to the subject, and thought nothing of himself. He would have kept silent if he had believed he could be thought talking for effect.The Signora stood a smiling and unseen listener to his description of his journey, and felt her sympathy and admiration increase every moment for the man who, in a hackneyed experience, had seen so much at every moment that was fresh and new, and, travelling the beaten ways of life, had found gems among the worn pebbles, had even broken the pebbles themselves, and revealed a precious color sparkling inside.“If only he could find so much in worn and hackneyed people!” she thought. “If he could compel the cold, the conventional, and the mean to break the dull crust that has accumulated around the original nature of them, what a boon it would be! There must be something tolerable, perhaps a capacity for becoming even admirable, left in the lowest. I would like to have him point it out or call it out; for sometimes my charity fails.”His recital finished, he stood an instant silent, looking down; then a swift glance probed the shadowed corner where the Signora stood, showing that he had all the while known she was there. It was not the inquisitive nor intrusive look of one who wishes to show a knowledge of what another has tried to hide from him, but a pleasant glance that sought her presence,and begged her not to separate herself from them.She came forward immediately, more pleased at the frank invitation than if he had pretended to be unaware of her presence.“I feel bound, in honor, to declare my intentions to you, Signora,” he said; “for you may look on me as a foe when you know them, and it is but right you should have fair warning. I have been told that you are disposed to win this family for Rome, and I am equally disposed to keep them in America. I should despair of success in such a rivalry but that I believe I have right on my side. Is it peace or war?”“Peace,” she replied. “I cannot war against right, and I ought not to wish against it. Moreover, since the family are the majority, and have free will, we can only try to influence, but must leave them to decide. I am sorry, though, that you distrust Rome so.”“Oh! it is not that,” he said quickly, “though, indeed, I do distrust Rome for some people—or rather, I distrust some people for Rome. I have known cases of the most deplorable deterioration of character here in persons who were considered at home a little better than the average. But that was not my thought in this instance. I hope our friends will return to America for other reasons. No one should, it seems to me, expatriate himself without a sort of necessity. The native land assigned us by Providence would seem to be the theatre in which it is our duty to act, and one of the motives of our visits to other countries should be to enrich our own with whatever of good we may find there. Every country needs its children; but America particularly needs all her good citizens, and the church in Americaneeds good Catholics. That is not a true Christian who spends a whole life abroad without necessity. The climate is not an excuse, for we have every climate; economy has ceased to be a sufficient motive; and mere pleasure is no reason for a Catholic to give.”“What, then, may be considered a good reason?” the Signora asked, wondering if she were to be included in the catalogue of the condemned.“An artist may study here a good many years,” was the reply. “The sculptor or the painter finds here his school. But I maintain that when the sculptor and painter are out of school, and begin to work in the strength of their own genius, if they have any, their place and their subjects are to be found in their own land. If they stay here they will never come to anything. They will only produce trite and worn-out imitations. The writer has a longer mission here, perhaps the longest; for thoughts are at home in every land, and that is the best where thoughts can best clothe themselves in words. There is another class who must be allowed to choose for themselves, though it would be better if they would choose to endure to the end in their own country—that is, certain tender souls from whom have been stripped friends and home, leaving them bare to a world that wounds them too much. Here, I have been assured and can well believe, they find a contentment not possible to them anywhere else. Their imaginations had flown here in childhood and youth, and had unconsciously made a nest to which they could themselves follow at need, and find a sort of repose. If they have not the courage or the strength to stay in the midst of our ceaseless, andsometimes even merciless, activity, I have not a word of blame for them. I would not breathe, even gently, against the bruised reeds.”He spoke with such tender feeling that for a moment no one said anything; then he added, smiling: “I hope the Signora does not think me too dogmatic.”“I think you are quite right,” she replied.“You have forgotten one large class of Americans who may be excused, and even lauded and encouraged, for taking up a permanent residence in Europe,” Mr. Vane said.“What, pray?”“Snobs,” he replied solemnly.The subject was whirled away on a little laugh, and a change of position showed them Annunciata on the shadowed side of theloggia, making coffee at a little table there, at the same time that Adreano offered them ices and cake. The place where the girl stood was quite darkened by the wall of Carlin’s studio and by an over-growing grape-vine, and the moonlight about revealed of her only a dark outline. But the flame of the spirit she was burning threw a pale blue light into her face and over her hands, flickering so that the light seemed rather to shine from, than on, her.“It looks Plutonian,” Marion said. “We are, perhaps, on a visit to Proserpine.”“Speaking of Proserpine reminds, me of pomegranate-seeds,” the Signora said; “and pomegranate-seeds remind me of something I heard very prettily said last summer by a very pretty young lady. We were in Subiaco, and had risen very early in the morning to go up to the church ofSt.Benedict. I noticed that Lily was very serious andsilent, so did not speak, but only looked at her while we waited a little in thesalafor another member of our party. She walked slowly up and down, and seemed to be praying; presently, as if recollecting that we had a difficult climb before us, she seated herself near a table on which a servant had just piled up the fruit she had been buying. Among it was a pomegranate, broken open, and bleeding a drop or two of crimson juice out on to the dark wood. Lily drew a small, pointed leaf from an orange stem, and made a knife of it to separate the grains of the pomegranate, presently lifted one, and then another, and another to her mouth. I only thought how pretty her daintiness was as she absently fed like a bird, when all at once she turned as crimson as the juicy grain she had just eaten, and sprang up from the table, throwing the leaf away, and uttering an exclamation of such distress that I thought she must have been poisoned. Her exclamation was odd: ‘O Pluto!’“‘You see,’ she explained after a minute, ‘I was saying the rosary, and had finished it, when I caught sight of the fruit here. And I thought then that, though our prayers may be flowers before the throne, our actions are fruits. Then I sat down to look at the pomegranate, and wondered what sort of a good action it was like; and while I wondered, I got tangled in a thicket of similitudes, and wandered off into mythology; and as I divided the grains I remembered poor Proserpine, and how Pluto, who knew well she could not leave him after having eaten, induced her to eat three pomegranate grains. I wondered if they were just like these, and how they tasted to her,and put one and another in my mouth, imagining myself in her place, and that presently my mother would come seeking me, and want to carry me back to heaven with her, and would find that I could not go because of these same pomegranate seeds. And then, my mind catching on the word Mother, which I had just been repeating on my rosary so many times, I remembered the Mother of God, and began to search for some Christian meaning in the myth. I thought Ceres was the giver of wheat and grain, therefore of bread, and Mary gave us the Bread of Life. Ceres came searching and mourning for her daughter, snatched away by the prince of darkness, and Mary watches and prays over those whom the enemy has snatched away from the garden of God, and who cry out to her for help. Ceres found that her daughter, having tasted of the fruit of the lower regions, was bound to spend one-half of her life there. Before I had time to find a Christian parallel for that part of the story, it flashed over me that my three pomegranate-seeds had cost me heaven for to-day, and deprived me of a privilege I might never have again. O Signora! I was going to receive Communion to-day in the grotto ofSt.Benedict!’”“It is not often,” the Signora added, “that one can retrace the wandering path of a reverie as my poor Lily did. Her story reminded me of an illustrated poem, with wheat and roses wreathed around the leaves and hanging in among the verses.”The bell announcing visitors, they went into the house again, and found Mr. Coleman and Signor Leonardo, the latter having come to see when his pupils would wish to resume their lessons.“I can assure you, Signor, that I am the only one who has thought of study during the last three days,” Isabel said. “You should commend me. I have faithfully learned an irregular verb every morning while taking my coffee. That is my rule; and it is becoming such a habit with me that the mere sight of a cup and saucer suggests to me an irregular verb. The night we spent at Monte Compatri I learned three, not being able to sleep for the fleas.”The Italian murmured some inarticulate commendation of her industry, and dropped his eyes. Her perfectly free and off-hand manner confounded him. To his mind such a lack of the downcast reserve of the girls he was accustomed to regard as models of behavior indicated a very strange disposition and an education still more strange. Yet he could not doubt that Miss Vane was respectable.Mr. Coleman, who was hovering near, begged permission to make a comment, which he would not be thought to intend as a criticism. “You say the night you ‘spent’ at Monte Compatri. Is it, may I ask, true that Americans always speak ofspendingtime? In England we say wepasstime. I have heard the peculiarity attributed to your nation, the reason given for it being that Americans are almost always engaged in business of some kind, and naturally use the expressions of trade.”Isabel not being quite prepared with an answer, hesitating whether to regard the suave manner or the annoying matter of the speech, the Signora, who had overheard it, came to her aid.“The fact is true, but the reason given is false,” she said. “I believe we Americans do almost alwaysspeak of spending time. It may be because we understand better the value of it. But you should be aware, Mr. Coleman, that the Italians also use the same expression, and they are the last people with whom you can associate the idea of trade and hurry. One of their critics cites the word as peculiarly beautiful so employed, as if time were held to be gold. Your English friends, when criticising the American expression, were probably thinking of their great clumsy pennies.”Mr. Coleman, who had not known that the Signora was near, stammered out a deprecating word. He had only asked for information.“The English are bound to criticise us, and to regard our differences as defects,” she went on, addressing Isabel. “You must not mind them, my dear. In fact, educated Americans speak and write the language better than the same class of English do, and use far less slang. One frequently finds inaccurate and cumbersome expressions in their very best writers. The exquisite Disraeli says, ‘I should have thought that you would have liked,’ which is ineffably clumsy. I can give you, however, a model of the most perfect English in an English writer, and I do not know an American who equals him. I refer to T. W.M.Marshall. I almost forget his thoughts while admiring the faultless language in which they are—not clothed so much as—armed. He has little color, but a great deal of point. One might say he writes inchiar-oscuro.“I have not the least prejudice against, nor for, any nation,” she continued, regarding with a little mocking smile her disconcerted visitor. “English people are as good as Americans, when they behavethemselves. They are not, however, so polite. Whatever peculiarities we may observe in our island neighbors, we are never guilty of the impropriety of mentioning them to their faces.”Mr. Coleman was crushed, and the Signora left him to recover himself as best he might. She had thought him long since cured of his national habit of making such comments, and was not disposed to suffer the slightest relapse.Marion, who had observed and watched for a moment the expression of Signor Leonardo’s face while Isabel spoke to him, began talking with him after a while, and soon found him a liberal—not one of those who make the name a cover for every species of disorder, but an honest man, of whom the worst that could be said was that he was mistaken.“You think that we Italians are different from yourselves,” he said somewhat excitedly, as the talk progressed. “When you praise your country, and boast of it, you forget that we, too, may wish to have a country of which we can boast and be proud.”Marion smiled quietly. “I should have said,” he replied, “that in the history of Italy, both past and present, there had been more pride felt and expressed than can be found in the histories of all the other nations of the earth put together; and that, besides this self-gratulation, no other nation on earth had been so praised, and loved, and feared, and sought as Italy. It has had every kind of boast—war-like, splendid, learned, poetic, and artistic. It has gone on through the centuries supreme in beauty and in interest, never failing to draw all hearts and eyes, and changing one attraction into another,instead of losing attraction. And all its changes have been ordered and harmonious till now. But I find neither beauty nor dignity in a manufacturing, trading Rome. She throws away her ownuniqueadvantages in seeking to vie with her younger and more vigorous sisters. Therôledoes not suit her.”“We will see!” the Italian said hotly. “We will make the trial, and find out for ourselves if our life and strength are so decayed that we can no longer boast of anything but ruins.”“I beg your pardon; but you have already tried, and failed,” the other returned. “You have proved yourselves only strong in complaint, but worthless in action. The only vigor I have heard of as shown by liberal Rome was in throwing flowers on Victor Emanuel when he entered, and now in cursing him for having taxed you to the verge of starvation. He isn’t afraid of you, and takes no pains to conciliate you. The only vigor here, of the kind you praise, is in the northern men he has brought down with him; and in another generation, if they should stay so long, the blood in their hearts will have thickened to the rich, slow ichor of Roman veins. No, sir! You cannot succeed in being yourselves and everybody else. You are no longer the world, but only a part of it, and must be content to see yourselves surpassed in many things. Your true dignity is in not contending for the prize which you will never win. If you had sat here quietly, a mere looker-on, a judge, perhaps, of the contests going on in the world, who could have said surely that you might not win any success by the mere half trying? You have provedyour own weakness, and merely exchanged an easy master for a hard one. You do not govern yourselves so much under the king as you did under the pope, and the complaints which were listened to in the old time nobody listens to now. You have been coaxed and petted for generations; now you are treated with contempt.”The Italian was pale, less with anger at such plain speaking than with the bitter consciousness that it was true. “You have not seen the end yet,” was all he could say. “Great changes are not wrought here so easily as in America. There it was simply Greek meeting Greek, and there was no history or tradition in the way. Here, besides our visible opponents, who may be half a dozen nations, we have to fight against generations of ghosts.”“O my country! how you have bewitched the world,” exclaimed the American. “I grant you there is a difference, sir, and it is even greater than you think; for it is a difference of nature as well as of circumstances. Italy is Calliope, with the scroll in her hand, and her proper position is a meditative and studious one; America is Atalanta, the swift runner, young, strong, and disdainful, with apples of gold to fling and stop her pursuers. Do you wish your muse to come down and join in the dusty race?”“Do you know,” the Signora asked of Marion, joining the two, “Victor Emanuel, they say, has a special devotion to the good thief?”The Italian rose. He had a great regard for the Signora, but, as she never spared him when politics was in question, he thought discretion the better part of valor.“How odd it is,” the lady remarked,when they were left alone with Marion, “that when we are best pleased we are sometimes most impatient! I am exceedingly well contented to-night, yet I do not know when I have been so sharp toward Mr. Coleman or Leonardo. I begin to feel premonitory symptoms of compunction. What is the philosophy of it, Mr. Vane?”“Marion could answer such a question better than I,” he replied. “But may not the reason be that, your mood and some of your circumstances being perfect, you cannot bear that all should not accord?—as, when we are listening to beautiful music, and are particularly inclined, to listen just then, the smallest interruption, especially if it be discordant, is intolerable.”Marion had been saying good-night to the sisters, who stood before him arm in arm, speaking with, or rather listening to, him. He turned on being appealed to.“Is it true,” he asked, “that the mood is one of perfect contentment? May it not be an exalted mood which demands contentment? I think we may sometimes feel an excitement and delight for which we can give no reason, unless it may be some rare moment of perfect physical health, like that which our first parents enjoyed in Eden. Naturally, in such a moment, we feel earth to be a paradise, and are impatient of anything which reminds us that it is not.”The Signora was surprised to find herself blushing, and annoyed when she perceived that the others observed it and seemed, also, to be surprised. Only Marion, bowing a good-night as soon as he spoke, appeared not to see.“Did you ever blush for nothing, dear?” she asked of Bianca, when the two went to their rooms together.“I can’t imagine what set me blushing to-night. I didn’t mean to blush, I had no reason, I didn’t know I was going to do so, and I have no idea what it was about.”“I never blush at the right moment,” Bianca replied rather soberly. “When embarrassing incidents occur, and, according to the books and speakers, one would be doing the proper thing to be confused, I am almost always cool. And then all at once, just for nothing, for a surprise, for a thing which would find other people cool, I am as red as—”“A rose,” finished the Signora, and kissed the girl’s cheek. “Good-night, dear. I like your friend exceedingly. I do not know when I have liked any one so much on short acquaintance.”“He is very agreeable,” Bianca returned, and echoed the good-night without another word.“That is one of the times you should have blushed, and didn’t,” thought her friend, and wondered a little.TO BE CONTINUED.

SIX SUNNY MONTHS.BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC.CHAPTERVIII.AN ARRIVAL.IfMr. Vane and the Signora felt any difficulty in meeting each other the next morning, it was soon over.Ce n’est que le premier pas qui coûte, and that one step brought them into the familiar path again, almost as though they had never left it. Almost, but not quite; for the entire unconsciousness of Mr. Vane’s manner impressed the lady strongly. It did not give her a new idea of him, but it emphasized the impressions she had for some time been receiving. She had never believed him to be so careless and indifferent as he often appeared to be, but it had grown upon her, little by little, that under that calm, and evennonchalant, exterior was hidden an immense self-control and watchfulness; that he could ignore things when he chose so perfectly that it was difficult to believe he had not forgotten them; and that, instead of being one of the most unobserving of men, he was, in reality, aware of everything that went on about him, seeing much which escaped ordinary lookers-on.Such a disposition in a person in whose honesty we have not entire confidence is disconcerting, and increases our distrust of them; but it excites in us a greater interest when we know them to be honest and friendly. If they have had sorrows, we look at them with a tenderer sympathy, searching for signs of a suffering which they will notexpress; if they have revealed a peculiar affection for us, we feel either sweetly protected or painfully haunted by an attention which seldom betrays itself, and which will not be evaded.The Signora could not have said clearly whether she was pleased or displeased. Mr. Vane had mistaken the nature of her sympathy, she thought, and, believing her to be attached to him, had spoken from gratitude; and though the conviction hurt her pride, she could not feel any resentment for a mistake kindly made on his part, and promptly corrected on hers. The only wise course was to put the matter completely out of her mind, as he seemed to have done, and to secure and enjoy the friendship she had no fear of his withdrawing.Isabel was greatly exercised in her mind that morning on the subject of insects.“I made up my mind in the middle of the night what I should do if I ever built a house in Italy,” she said. “I should have every stick and stone on the place carried away, a deep trench dug all around the land, and a high wall built all around the trench. Then I should have the whole surface of the ground covered with combustible material, and a fire kindled over it. When that had burned a day or two, I should have cellars, wells, drains, everything that had to beexcavated, made thoroughly, and the garden-plot well turned over. Then I should have a second conflagration, covering everything. Next would come the house-building. For that every stone should be washed and fumigated before it was brought in at the gate, and all the earth and gravel should be baked in a furnace, and every tree and shrub, and cart and donkey and workman, should be washed seven times; and finally, when the house should be finished as to the stone-work and plaster, I would have it drenched inside and out with spirits of wine, and set fire to. By taking those precautions I believe that one might have a place free of fleas. What do you think, Signora?”“My dear, I think you would have had your labor for your pains,” was the reply. “These little creatures would hop over your walls, come in snugly hidden in your furniture, ride grandly in on the horses and in the coaches of your visitors, and even enter triumphantly on your own person. They are invincible. One must have patience.”“I would continue to burn the place over, furniture and all, till I had routed them,” the young woman declared. “I believe it could be done. I would have patience, but it should be the patience of continual resistance, not of submission. I would not give up though I should reduce the place to ashes.”Mr. Vane asked his daughter if she ever heard of such a process as biting off one’s nose to spite one’s face; and then he told her a very pathetic story of a man and a flea: “Once there was a man who was greatly tormented by a flea which he could never catch. In vain he searched his garments and the house. The insect hopped from place to place, but always returnedas soon as the search was over. At length, in a fit of impatience, the man hit upon a desperate project, which he did not doubt would succeed. He went softly to the seashore and, after waiting till the enemy was plainly to be felt between his shoulders, flung himself headlong into the water. But, alas! engrossed by the one thought of vengeance, he had not calculated his own peril. The waters drew him away from shore in spite of his struggles, and just as they were closing over him, with his last glimpse of earth, he saw the flea, which had hopped from him on to a passing plank, floating safely to shore again.”“The moral is—” Mr. Vane was concluding, when his daughter interrupted him.“I maintain that the man conquered!” she exclaimed. “That flea could never bite him again.”This uncomfortable talk was carried on in the house, which naturally suggested it. But when they went out of doors, they left it behind them. The quaint, zigzag streets; the countless number of odd nooks in every direction; the narrow vistas here and there between close rows of houses, where a wedge of distant mountain, as blue as a lump of lapis-lazuli, seemed to be thrust between the very walls, or where the rough gray ribbon of the street became a ribbon of flowery green, silvering off into the horizon, with a city showing on it far away no larger than a daisy; the people in the streets, and all about, whose simple naturalness was more astonishing than the most unnatural behavior could have been—all these kept their eyes and minds alert.In the midst of the town stands the church, the houses clustering about it like children about their mother’s knees. Some little childrenwere playing on the steps outside; inside, a group of women, with white handkerchiefs on their heads, were kneeling about a confessional, waiting their turns. One of them, who had confessed, came slowly away, and went toward the high altar, touching here and there with a small staff she carried, her eyes looking straight ahead.The Signora stepped quickly forward to remove a chair from her path. “You are blind!” she whispered pitifully.The old woman smiled, and turned toward the voice a face of serious sweetness, as she made the reply ofSt.Clara: “She is not blind who sees God!”She reached the altar-railing, and knelt there to wait for the Mass. Where she knelt the one sunbeam that found its way into the church so early fell over her. Feeling its warmth like a gentle touch, she lifted her face to it and smiled again.The children, weary of their play, came in and wandered about the church. One, finding its mother among the penitents, went to lean on her lap. She smoothed its pretty curls absently with one hand, while the other slipped bead after bead of her chaplet, her lips moving rapidly. Another, seeing the hand of the priest resting on the door of the confessional, just under the curtain, went to kiss it, standing on tiptoe, and straining up to reach the fingers with its baby mouth. A third, seeing some one near it kneel before the altar, made a liliputian genuflection, and went down on its knees in the middle of the church, a mere dot in that space, and remained there looking innocently about, uncomprehending but unquestioning. Another dreamed along the side of the church, looking at the familiar pictures,and presently, climbing with some difficulty the steps of one of the altars, seated itself and began softly to stroke the cheeks of a marble cherub that supported the altar-table.If a company of baby angels had come in, they would not have made less noise nor done less harm; perhaps, would not have done more good.“How peaceful it is!” Mr. Vane exclaimed as they went out into the air again. “How heavenly peaceful!”They saw only women and children on their way down through the town. Some of the men had gone off in the night to Rome, carrying wine in those carts of theirs, with the awning slung like a galley-sail over the driver’s seat, and the cluster of bells atop, each tinkling in a different tone, and the little white dog keeping watch over the barrels while the man dozed. Others had gone at day-dawn to work in the Campagna, and might be seen from the town moving, as small as spiders, among the vines or in the gardens.Just below the great piazza, at the entrance of the town, beside the dip of the road into the hollow betweenMonte CompatriandMonte San Sylvestro, a long, tiled roof was visible supported on arches. They leaned over the parapet supporting the road, and watched for a little while the lively scene below. All the space beneath this roof was an immense tank of water, or fountain, as it was called, divided into square compartments. Around these stood forty or fifty women washing. They soaped and dipped their clothes in the constantly-changing water, and beat them on the wide stone border of the fountain, working leisurely, and chatting with each other. Thewhite handkerchiefs on their heads, and, now and then, a bit of bright drapery on their shoulders, shone out of the shadow made by the roof and the piers supporting it, and the rich green of that sheltered nook between the hills. It was, in fact, the town wash-tub, and this was the town wash-day. In this place the women washed the year round, in the open air, and with cold water, spreading their clothes out to dry on the grass and bushes.The travellers went upMonte San Sylvestro, gathering flowers as they went. The path was rough and wild, winding to and fro among the bushes as it climbed, and hidden, from time to time, by tall trees. Half way up they met a man with a herd of goats rushing and tumbling down the steep way. A little farther on, at a turn of the road, was a large shrine holding a crucifix. The place seemed to be an absolute solitude, but the withered flowers drooping from the wire screen, and the sod, worn to dust, at the foot of the step, showed that faith and love had passed that way, and stopped in passing. Near this shrine was a protruding ledge, from under which the gravel had dropped away or been dug away, leaving a sort of cave. The place needed only a gray-bearded old man clad in rags, and bending over an open book, an hour-glass before him, and perhaps a lion lying at his feet. Or one might have placed there the Magdalen, with her long hair trailing in the sand, and her woful eyes looking off into the distant east, as she gazed across the blue ocean from her cave on the coast of France. There was still faith enough in this region to have honored and protected such a penitent.The three women gathered some green to go with their flowers, clearedaway all the withered stems and leaves, and wrote in pink and white and blue around the edge of the screen. When they had done all that they could well reach, Mr. Vane finished for them by writing last, over the head of the crucifix, the word that in reality came first. Then they went on, leaving the symbol of all that Heaven could do for earth encircled by the expression of all that earth can do for Heaven—“Credo, Spero, Amo, Ringrazio, Pento.” They wrote these words in flowers, Bianca weaving a verdant Hope at the right hand, Isabel a white Thanksgiving at the left, and the Signora placing a rose-red Love and Penitence under the feet. Over the head Mr. Vane had set in blue the word of Faith.The summit of the mountain was crowned with the convent and church ofSt.Sylvester; but the buildings extended quite to the edge of the platform on the eastern side, and the fine view was from the gardens on the west side, and, of course, inaccessible to ladies. They could only obtain glimpses over the tops of trees that climbed from below, and through the trunks of trees that pressed close to the corners of the stone barriers. No person was visible but a monk in a brown robe and a broad-brimmed hat, who lingered near a moment, as if to give them an opportunity to speak to him if they wished, then entered a long court leading to the convent door, and disappeared under the portico.A perfect silence reigned. They heard nothing but their own steps on the grassy pavement. The town ofMonte Compatri, seen through the trees on the other height, looked more like a gray rock than a city. Not a sign of life was visible from it. The glimpses they caught of theCampagna had seemed fragments of a vast green solitude where grass had long overgrown the traces of men. No smallest cloud gave life or motion to the steady blue overhead; no song of bird wove a silver link between familiar scenes and that solemn retreat. The soul, stripped of its veiling cares and interests, was like Moses on the mountain, face to face with God. History, mythology, poetry—they were not! The buzzing of these golden bees that made the brow of Tusculum their hive was inaudible and forgotten. On this height was a station-house of eternity, and the electric current of the other world flowed through its blue and silent air.“It seems to me one should prepare one’s mind before going there,” Bianca said, looking back from the foot of the mountain, after they had descended. They had scarcely spoken a word going down.The impression made on them was, indeed, so strong that they scarcely observed anything about them for several hours; and it was only when they were going down to Frascati again in the afternoon that they roused themselves from their silence.“We shall have time to go into Villa Aldobrandini a little while,” the Signora said, looking at her watch. “The train does not start for more than an hour. We can send the man on to the station with our bags, and walk down ourselves. Of course all these villas have very nearly the same view, but this is the finest of all.”They had time for a short visit only, but their guide made the most of it. Going round one of the circling avenues, dark with ancient ilex-trees, she turned into a cross-road that led directly to the upper centre of the villa, where the cascadesbegan. First, from under a tomb-like door in the side of a mound, flowed a swift ribbon of water between stone borders. It slanted with the hill, and flashed along silent in the sunshine, eager to leap through the mouth of the great mask below, to scatter its spray over carven stone and a hundred flowers.They followed the cascades down to the lower front, with its niches, statues, chapel, and chambers, and the noblecasinofacing it.“Every story of the house, as you go up,” the Signora said, “brings you on a level with a new cascade, and from the topmost room you look into the heart of the upper thicket, where you might imagine yourself unseen. Indeed, splendid as these scenes are, there is, to me, a constant sense of discomfort in that frequent appearance of solitude where solitude is not. There seems to be no nook, however apparently remote, which is not perfectly overlooked from some almost invisible watch-tower. It may be necessary, but the suggestion is of suspicion and espionage.”They left the villa by the front avenue and lawn, walking through grass and flowers ankle deep, and gathering handfuls of dear, familiar pennyroyal that they found growing all about.When they reached the station there was yet a little time to wait, and they stood in the western windows and looked off to the distant ridges that showed their dark edges against intervening layers of silvery mist. They were ridges of jewels, marked thickly with spires, towers, and palaces. At the left the dome of the world’s temple was visible, making everything else of its sort puny, and next it, like the outline of a forest against the sky, the Quirinalstretched its royal front. All floated in that delicate mist that, from the distance, always veils the Campagna, as if the innumerable ghosts of the past became luminous when so seen, evading for ever the nearer spectator.Framing this distant picture, a hill of olives at one side of the station-house sloped to a hill of vines at the other, and the railroad track, set in roses, curved round in the narrow strip of land between them.The Signora, putting her arm around Bianca, and pointing to one of these ridges, whispered in her ear: “What does my darling think that is—the two dark spots shaped like two thimbles, and about as large, and the something that might be a lead-pencil standing up between them? What blessedcampanileand twincupoledo you wish them to be?”“Oh! I was searching for them,” the girl exclaimed, and kissed her hand to the far-away basilica. “We must go there a few minutes this evening,” she added—“go up the steps, at least, if it should be too late to go in.”They started, and went trailing along through the enchanted land, happy to return to the city that already seemed to them like home, and, having learnt some landmarks in their outward passage, added to the number of their acquisitions in returning. The Signora indicated the principal tombs and named the aqueducts. “There are the Claudian and Marcian, side by side, galloping over the plain like a pair of coursers, each bringing a lake in its veins to quench the thirst of Rome. SixtusV., who built our chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, Bianca, used those Claudian arches to bring a new stream in when the old one failed. It is called AquaFelice. His name was Felice Peretti.”“Stia felice!” said Bianca, smiling at the grand old arches.“In what a circle water goes,” she added after a moment, “and what a beautiful circle!—down in the rain, running in the river, where the wheel touches the earth, rising on the sunbeams, running in clouds, where the wheel touches the sky, dropping in rain again, and so on round and round.”“Apropos of SixtusV.,” the Signora said to Mr. Vane, “see how the church recognizes and rewards merit. It is, in fact, the only true republic. That wonderful man was a swineherd in Montalto when he was a boy, and Cardinal of Montalto when he was a man, and he died one of the most brilliant popes that ever wore the tiara. One cannot help wondering what the boy Felice thought of in those days when he watched the swine, and if ever a vision came to him of kings kneeling to kiss his feet. And, more yet, I wonder what thoughts the mother had of his future when she watched over her sleeping child, or looked after him when he went out to his day’s task. He could not have been so great but that his mother gave the first impulse. One does not gather figs of thistles.”“I agree with you about the mother,” Mr. Vane replied cordially. “I don’t believe any man ever accomplished much of real worth in life without his mother having set him on the track of it. Sometimes a noble mother has a son who does not do justice to her example and teaching. But even then, if her duty has been fully done, she may be sure that he is the better for it, though not so good as he should be. I am sure I owe it to my mother that, though my life has notbenefited the world much, my sins have been rather of omission than of commission. Come to think of it, I have never done her any particular credit; but I am happy to be able to say that I have never done her any great discredit.”While he spoke, his face half-turned toward the window, his manner more energetic than was usual with him, the large blue eyes of the Signora rested on him with an expression of grave kindness and interest. When he ended, she leaned slightly toward him, smiling, and tossed him a rose she had drawn from her belt, repeating Bianca’s exclamation: “Stia felice!”His fingers closed on the stem of the rose which had touched his hand, and he held it, but did not turn his face, seeming to wait for her to go on.“You should read Padre Ventura,” she said, “though, indeed, you have less need than most men. I would like to put hisLa Donna Cattolicainto the hands of every Catholic—yes, and of every Protestant. I would like the Woman’s Rights women, and those who think that Christianity and the church have degraded us, and some Catholics too, to learn fromSt.Chrysostom,St.Jerome, and Gregory the Great what estimate Christian women should be held in. It would do them good to read the works of this eloquent priest, who speaks with authority, and ennobles himself in honoring the sisters of the Queen of angels. Padre Ventura must have had a beautiful soul. I fancy that his ashes even must be whiter than the ashes of most men. I always judge men’s characters by their estimate of women, and what they seek in women by what they say is to be found in them.”“This author is dead, then?” Mr. Vane remarked, looking attentively at the Signora in his turn.“Yes. He died years before I had ever heard his name. When you have read something of his, you may like to visit his tomb inSt.Andrea delle Valle. The stone over his sepulchre is in the pavement, about half way up the nave, and there’s a fine monument in the transept on the epistle side. I wish every Christian woman who visits Rome would drop a flower on the stone that covers all that was earthly of that man, and remember for a moment the place he assigns her in her home and in the world. ‘The man,’ he says, ‘is the king of the family; the woman is the priest.’”She was silent, pursuing the subject mentally, then added: “He says so many beautiful things. Describing the different kinds of courage with which the Christian martyrs and certain celebrated pagans met death, he speaks of one as ‘the modesty and humility that throws itself into the arms of hope, to rest there,’ and the other as ‘the pride that immolates itself to desperation, in order to lose itself there.’ One he calls ‘the sublime of virtue,’ and the other ‘the sublime of vice.’ He had mentioned Socrates and Cato in the connection.”They had reached the station while this talk was going on, and, coming out into the piazza, separated there, the Signora and Bianca coming down by one of the fine new streets to pay a visit to their basilica on the way home. They found the door just closed, it being half an hour beforeAve Maria; but it was a pleasure to walk a while on the long platform at the head of the steps, bathed in the red gold of the setting sun, that gilded, but did not scorch; to look up at the fringe ofpink flowers growing in spikes at the top of the façade, and at the flocks of little gray birds that flew about among them; and to glance up or down the streets that stretched off like rays from the sun, and then to stroll slowly homeward through the lounging, motley crowd.They met Mr. Vane and Isabel at the door.“Did you think we also might not visit a church?” Isabel said. “I invited papa to go intoSt.Bernard’s, and, though they were about closing, they kept open ten minutes for us. I am not sure but I may adopt that church as my favorite. It is not too large. The congregations are orderly, and all attend to one service; and, besides, I like a rotunda. If I should go there, papa, you must side with me, that the house may be equally divided.”“I’m not sure I like those cherubic churches, all head and no nave,” Mr. Vane replied. “The basilica, being modelled on the human body, has a more human feeling.”The door opened before they rang, and the servants, having been on the watch, welcomed them with smiling faces, kissing the hand of the Signora. It was impossible not to believe in, and be touched by, their sincerity and affection, which expressed themselves, not in looks and words alone, but in actions. The house showed plainly, by its exquisite cleanliness, that the absence of the mistress had not been a holiday for them; and they had prepared everything they could to please her, even to filling all the smaller vases with her favorite flowers.“You haven’t been spending your money for violets, you extravagant children!” she exclaimed.They had been watching to see if she would notice them, and weredelighted with her surprise and pleasure.No, they had not spent money, but only time and strength. They had gathered the flowers themselves in Villa Borghese.“I do not take on myself to decide great social questions,” the Signora said, as they sat talking over their supper. “I could not decide them if I would. But this I must think: that, in most cases, little happiness is to be found for people except in the position in which they were born. Look at these two good creatures who serve us. Their parents before them were servants, and they do not expect or wish to be anything more. They want the rights their claim to which they understand perfectly—fair wages, not too hard work, and an occasional holiday. They know that the fatigues of the great, the wealthy, and the ambitious are greater than theirs, though of a different sort. If wealth were to drop upon them, they would grasp it, no doubt, but it would embarrass them. They would never strive for it. Do you know, I find their position dignified, even when they black my shoes. It’s a nicer thing to do than toadying for fine friends, or striving for place, or gnawing one’s heart out with envy.”Mr. Vane smiled slightly.“How is it about your swineherd, who changed his rough straw hat for a triple crown, and had the royalty and nobility of centuries come to kiss the foot that once hadn’t even a shoe to it?”“Oh!” she replied, “the church is the beginning of the kingdom of heaven on earth, and the meek and the poor in spirit possess it already. Besides, I always make exception of those whom God has especially endowed with gifts of nature orgrace, or with both. Besides, again, this man did not seek greatness; it was conferred on him.”Isabel felt called on to show her colors.“America for ever!” she said. “Europe will do very well for the great, and for those who are willing to remain small; but inmycountry there’s a fair field for everybody. Everybody there is born to as high a position as he can work his way to, and his destiny is not in the beginning of his life, but in the end of it. We are like Adams and Eves new-made, and dominion is given us over the garden of the new world.”She paused for breath, and the Signora applauded. “Brava! I am willing you should defeat me. I will call America not only the garden, but the nursery-garden, of the new world, if you like. Long live your seedlings!”“How would you like it,” the girl went on, rather red in the cheeks—“how would you like it, if you had been born in some very humble position in life, instead of in the position of a lady, to have some one tell you not to try to rise, but to stay where you were? Just take it to yourself.”“If I had been so born I should have been a different sort of person, and cannot say how I should have felt,” the Signora replied tranquilly. “If I had been a product of generations of obedience, instead of generations of command, do not you see that the marriages would have been different, the habits, the traditions, the education, everything but the immortal spark and the common human nature? Or, if I had been like what I am now, I think I should have looked for, and found, the beauties and pleasures in my path.” She had been speakingvery quietly, but here she drew herself up a little, and a slight color rose to her face as she went on: “I have never striven for any of those things the chase of which seems so mean to me. It has never occurred to me that I might be honored by any association, except with a person either very good or very highly gifted by nature. The only rank which impresses me is that in the church. For the rest—you have heard the expression, ‘a distinction without a difference.’”Isabel gave a puzzled sigh. “I never could understand you,” she said, a little impatiently. “Sometimes you seem to me the haughtiest of women; sometimes I think you not half proud enough. One moment you seem to be a red republican, the next an aristocrat. I can’t make out what you really are. You graduate your bows to an inch, according to the rank you salute. I’ve seen your eyes flash lightning at a person for being too familiar toward you; and then I find you talking about the rights of the people almost like a communist.”The Signora was crumbling a bit of bread while she listened, and did not look up in answering: “I am quite ashamed of having made myself the subject of conversation for so long a time. Excuse me! Shall we go out to theloggiafor a little while? It is very warm here.”“Permit me!” Mr. Vane interposed. He had been looking at his daughter with great displeasure. “I would say, Isabel, that when you shall have thought and learned more, you will, I hope, understand the Signora better than you do now, and will try to imitate the justice which can give to all their due, and not rob Peter to pay Paul. Moreover, I would remind you that an intrusive familiarity is nota right of any one, even to an inferior. And now, Signora, shall we go to theloggia?”Perhaps it was because she had never before been so sharply criticised to her face; but the Signora had, certainly, never before known how pleasant it is to be defended. This pleasure showed itself in her manner as they went out. She usually held herself rather erect, and had an air of composure which might easily be called pride; but now there was a slight drooping of the head and bending of the form which gave her an appearance of softness, as of one who droops content under a protecting shadow. It was a softness which she, perhaps, needed.They heard the door-bell ringing as they went up theloggiasteps, and presently an exclamation in Isabel’s clear voice. She had not followed them, they now perceived, being a little displeased or hurt at the reproof to which she had been subjected.“Who can have come?” said the Signora, listening. “It seems to be some one whom Isabel knows.”Bianca stood at the railing and looked intently at the windows of thesala, faintly lighted from the room beyond. Two figures passed through the dimness and disappeared. They might be coming to theloggia, or they might be going to the sofa under that picture of Penelope and Ulysses—the Signora and Mr. Vane, both a little preoccupied, did not notice or care which. If any one wished to see them, he could come to them.Bianca, alone, stood looking steadily. The full moon, shining in her face, had showed it for one moment as red as a rose; but as the minutes passed, that lovely color faded, growing paler, till itwas whiter than the light that veiled it, sparkling like silver on its beautiful outlines. Where was the sweet confidence that had been growing up in her heart for the last few weeks? Gone like a cloud-house built on a cloud. She was terrified at the fear and pain that had taken the place of it, and began to lose sight of the cause in trembling at the magnitude of the effect.“It is surely wrong that anything in the world should make me feel so,” she murmured. “What have I been doing? I must have thought of this too much, and now is come my punishment. Here in Rome, where we shall stay but a few months, I ought to have given all my mind and heart to religion. It is a shame that I have not. I do not deserve the privilege of being here.”She strove to gather about her mind the sacred thoughts and associations which the Christian finds in the heart of the Christian world, to dwarf with the grand interests of eternity the passing interests of time, and she was in some measure successful, to the extent, at least, of inspiring herself with resolution, if not with peace.“Oh! how terrible is life,” she said, looking upward, as if to escape the sight of it. “How it catches us unawares, sometimes, and wrings the blood out of our hearts!” The prayer that always rose to her lips in any necessity, “We fly to thy patronage,” escaped them now; and then she swiftly and firmly read to herself her lesson: “I will be friendly and gentle toward him. I will neither seek him nor shrink from him, nor show any foolish consciousness, if I can help it; and I will not be angry with Isabel. If he should care for me in the wayI have thought, he will come every step of the way for me; if he should not, I shall not win either respect or affection by putting myself in his way. For the rest, I will trust my future with God.”“Bianca,” said her sister’s voice at her elbow, “who do you think has come?”Whatever might happen, it was a pleasure to meet him, and there was no effort or embarrassment in her greeting. That moment of pain and recollection had lifted her merely earthly affection so that it became touched with the serious sweetness of heavenly charity, as the mist, lifting at morning from the bosom of the river, where it has hung through the dark hours, grows silver in the upper light. She held out her hand and smiled. “You are welcome! Papa, here is an old friend of ours.”The Signora was instantly all attention. Her own affairs were quite forgotten in those of her beloved young favorite. She was eager to see this man, to watch him, to understand him. If he should suit her and be good to Bianca, there was nothing she would not do for him; if he should be lacking in principle, or in kindness to her darling, woe to him! She would most certainly—And here, just as she was meditating in what way she could most fittingly punish him without hurting any one else, he turned, at Mr. Vane’s introduction, and saluted her with a smile and glance that won her completely. It was not the meeting of two strangers. He had thought of his lady’s guardian with almost as much interest, perhaps, as she had thought of her friend’s lover, and had expected to find in her either a help or a hindrance. Her searching regard hadnot disconcerted, then, but reassured him rather.The Signora soon made an excuse to go into the house a moment, and left the Vanes and their visitor to renew their intercourse without interruption, and go through the mutual questioning of friends reunited after many and varied experiences. Returning quietly after a while, she stood in a corner of theloggiaand observed them. Mr. Vane sat with a daughter at either side, and Marion stood opposite them, leaning back against the railing and talking. The moon shone in his face and flowed down his form, investing both, or revealing in both, a beauty inexpressibly noble and graceful. One might say that he looked as if he had been formed to music. A gold bronze color in his hair showed where the light struck fully, a flash of dusky blue came now and then from under his thick eye-lashes, and when he smiled one knew that his teeth were perfect and snowy white. His voice, too, was very pleasant, with a sound of laughter in it when he talked gayly—a laughter like that we fancy in a brook. It was as though his thoughts and fancies sparkled as they passed into the air.“He is certainly fascinating,” the Signora thought. “I hope he does not try to be so.”He did not. No one could be more unconscious of the effect produced by what was personal in his talk than Marion. If he sometimes appeared, while talking, almost to forget his company, it was not because he thought of himself, but because he was absorbed in his subject. He saw plainly before his eyes that which he described, and he made others see it. Bright, animated, varied, passing, not abruptly, but with the grace of a bird thatswims through the air, and alights for a moment, now here, now there, on a tree, a shrine, a house-top, a mountain-top, a window-ledge with an inside view, he carried his listeners along with him, charmed and unconscious of time. He knew that they were pleased, but gave the credit to the subject, and thought nothing of himself. He would have kept silent if he had believed he could be thought talking for effect.The Signora stood a smiling and unseen listener to his description of his journey, and felt her sympathy and admiration increase every moment for the man who, in a hackneyed experience, had seen so much at every moment that was fresh and new, and, travelling the beaten ways of life, had found gems among the worn pebbles, had even broken the pebbles themselves, and revealed a precious color sparkling inside.“If only he could find so much in worn and hackneyed people!” she thought. “If he could compel the cold, the conventional, and the mean to break the dull crust that has accumulated around the original nature of them, what a boon it would be! There must be something tolerable, perhaps a capacity for becoming even admirable, left in the lowest. I would like to have him point it out or call it out; for sometimes my charity fails.”His recital finished, he stood an instant silent, looking down; then a swift glance probed the shadowed corner where the Signora stood, showing that he had all the while known she was there. It was not the inquisitive nor intrusive look of one who wishes to show a knowledge of what another has tried to hide from him, but a pleasant glance that sought her presence,and begged her not to separate herself from them.She came forward immediately, more pleased at the frank invitation than if he had pretended to be unaware of her presence.“I feel bound, in honor, to declare my intentions to you, Signora,” he said; “for you may look on me as a foe when you know them, and it is but right you should have fair warning. I have been told that you are disposed to win this family for Rome, and I am equally disposed to keep them in America. I should despair of success in such a rivalry but that I believe I have right on my side. Is it peace or war?”“Peace,” she replied. “I cannot war against right, and I ought not to wish against it. Moreover, since the family are the majority, and have free will, we can only try to influence, but must leave them to decide. I am sorry, though, that you distrust Rome so.”“Oh! it is not that,” he said quickly, “though, indeed, I do distrust Rome for some people—or rather, I distrust some people for Rome. I have known cases of the most deplorable deterioration of character here in persons who were considered at home a little better than the average. But that was not my thought in this instance. I hope our friends will return to America for other reasons. No one should, it seems to me, expatriate himself without a sort of necessity. The native land assigned us by Providence would seem to be the theatre in which it is our duty to act, and one of the motives of our visits to other countries should be to enrich our own with whatever of good we may find there. Every country needs its children; but America particularly needs all her good citizens, and the church in Americaneeds good Catholics. That is not a true Christian who spends a whole life abroad without necessity. The climate is not an excuse, for we have every climate; economy has ceased to be a sufficient motive; and mere pleasure is no reason for a Catholic to give.”“What, then, may be considered a good reason?” the Signora asked, wondering if she were to be included in the catalogue of the condemned.“An artist may study here a good many years,” was the reply. “The sculptor or the painter finds here his school. But I maintain that when the sculptor and painter are out of school, and begin to work in the strength of their own genius, if they have any, their place and their subjects are to be found in their own land. If they stay here they will never come to anything. They will only produce trite and worn-out imitations. The writer has a longer mission here, perhaps the longest; for thoughts are at home in every land, and that is the best where thoughts can best clothe themselves in words. There is another class who must be allowed to choose for themselves, though it would be better if they would choose to endure to the end in their own country—that is, certain tender souls from whom have been stripped friends and home, leaving them bare to a world that wounds them too much. Here, I have been assured and can well believe, they find a contentment not possible to them anywhere else. Their imaginations had flown here in childhood and youth, and had unconsciously made a nest to which they could themselves follow at need, and find a sort of repose. If they have not the courage or the strength to stay in the midst of our ceaseless, andsometimes even merciless, activity, I have not a word of blame for them. I would not breathe, even gently, against the bruised reeds.”He spoke with such tender feeling that for a moment no one said anything; then he added, smiling: “I hope the Signora does not think me too dogmatic.”“I think you are quite right,” she replied.“You have forgotten one large class of Americans who may be excused, and even lauded and encouraged, for taking up a permanent residence in Europe,” Mr. Vane said.“What, pray?”“Snobs,” he replied solemnly.The subject was whirled away on a little laugh, and a change of position showed them Annunciata on the shadowed side of theloggia, making coffee at a little table there, at the same time that Adreano offered them ices and cake. The place where the girl stood was quite darkened by the wall of Carlin’s studio and by an over-growing grape-vine, and the moonlight about revealed of her only a dark outline. But the flame of the spirit she was burning threw a pale blue light into her face and over her hands, flickering so that the light seemed rather to shine from, than on, her.“It looks Plutonian,” Marion said. “We are, perhaps, on a visit to Proserpine.”“Speaking of Proserpine reminds, me of pomegranate-seeds,” the Signora said; “and pomegranate-seeds remind me of something I heard very prettily said last summer by a very pretty young lady. We were in Subiaco, and had risen very early in the morning to go up to the church ofSt.Benedict. I noticed that Lily was very serious andsilent, so did not speak, but only looked at her while we waited a little in thesalafor another member of our party. She walked slowly up and down, and seemed to be praying; presently, as if recollecting that we had a difficult climb before us, she seated herself near a table on which a servant had just piled up the fruit she had been buying. Among it was a pomegranate, broken open, and bleeding a drop or two of crimson juice out on to the dark wood. Lily drew a small, pointed leaf from an orange stem, and made a knife of it to separate the grains of the pomegranate, presently lifted one, and then another, and another to her mouth. I only thought how pretty her daintiness was as she absently fed like a bird, when all at once she turned as crimson as the juicy grain she had just eaten, and sprang up from the table, throwing the leaf away, and uttering an exclamation of such distress that I thought she must have been poisoned. Her exclamation was odd: ‘O Pluto!’“‘You see,’ she explained after a minute, ‘I was saying the rosary, and had finished it, when I caught sight of the fruit here. And I thought then that, though our prayers may be flowers before the throne, our actions are fruits. Then I sat down to look at the pomegranate, and wondered what sort of a good action it was like; and while I wondered, I got tangled in a thicket of similitudes, and wandered off into mythology; and as I divided the grains I remembered poor Proserpine, and how Pluto, who knew well she could not leave him after having eaten, induced her to eat three pomegranate grains. I wondered if they were just like these, and how they tasted to her,and put one and another in my mouth, imagining myself in her place, and that presently my mother would come seeking me, and want to carry me back to heaven with her, and would find that I could not go because of these same pomegranate seeds. And then, my mind catching on the word Mother, which I had just been repeating on my rosary so many times, I remembered the Mother of God, and began to search for some Christian meaning in the myth. I thought Ceres was the giver of wheat and grain, therefore of bread, and Mary gave us the Bread of Life. Ceres came searching and mourning for her daughter, snatched away by the prince of darkness, and Mary watches and prays over those whom the enemy has snatched away from the garden of God, and who cry out to her for help. Ceres found that her daughter, having tasted of the fruit of the lower regions, was bound to spend one-half of her life there. Before I had time to find a Christian parallel for that part of the story, it flashed over me that my three pomegranate-seeds had cost me heaven for to-day, and deprived me of a privilege I might never have again. O Signora! I was going to receive Communion to-day in the grotto ofSt.Benedict!’”“It is not often,” the Signora added, “that one can retrace the wandering path of a reverie as my poor Lily did. Her story reminded me of an illustrated poem, with wheat and roses wreathed around the leaves and hanging in among the verses.”The bell announcing visitors, they went into the house again, and found Mr. Coleman and Signor Leonardo, the latter having come to see when his pupils would wish to resume their lessons.“I can assure you, Signor, that I am the only one who has thought of study during the last three days,” Isabel said. “You should commend me. I have faithfully learned an irregular verb every morning while taking my coffee. That is my rule; and it is becoming such a habit with me that the mere sight of a cup and saucer suggests to me an irregular verb. The night we spent at Monte Compatri I learned three, not being able to sleep for the fleas.”The Italian murmured some inarticulate commendation of her industry, and dropped his eyes. Her perfectly free and off-hand manner confounded him. To his mind such a lack of the downcast reserve of the girls he was accustomed to regard as models of behavior indicated a very strange disposition and an education still more strange. Yet he could not doubt that Miss Vane was respectable.Mr. Coleman, who was hovering near, begged permission to make a comment, which he would not be thought to intend as a criticism. “You say the night you ‘spent’ at Monte Compatri. Is it, may I ask, true that Americans always speak ofspendingtime? In England we say wepasstime. I have heard the peculiarity attributed to your nation, the reason given for it being that Americans are almost always engaged in business of some kind, and naturally use the expressions of trade.”Isabel not being quite prepared with an answer, hesitating whether to regard the suave manner or the annoying matter of the speech, the Signora, who had overheard it, came to her aid.“The fact is true, but the reason given is false,” she said. “I believe we Americans do almost alwaysspeak of spending time. It may be because we understand better the value of it. But you should be aware, Mr. Coleman, that the Italians also use the same expression, and they are the last people with whom you can associate the idea of trade and hurry. One of their critics cites the word as peculiarly beautiful so employed, as if time were held to be gold. Your English friends, when criticising the American expression, were probably thinking of their great clumsy pennies.”Mr. Coleman, who had not known that the Signora was near, stammered out a deprecating word. He had only asked for information.“The English are bound to criticise us, and to regard our differences as defects,” she went on, addressing Isabel. “You must not mind them, my dear. In fact, educated Americans speak and write the language better than the same class of English do, and use far less slang. One frequently finds inaccurate and cumbersome expressions in their very best writers. The exquisite Disraeli says, ‘I should have thought that you would have liked,’ which is ineffably clumsy. I can give you, however, a model of the most perfect English in an English writer, and I do not know an American who equals him. I refer to T. W.M.Marshall. I almost forget his thoughts while admiring the faultless language in which they are—not clothed so much as—armed. He has little color, but a great deal of point. One might say he writes inchiar-oscuro.“I have not the least prejudice against, nor for, any nation,” she continued, regarding with a little mocking smile her disconcerted visitor. “English people are as good as Americans, when they behavethemselves. They are not, however, so polite. Whatever peculiarities we may observe in our island neighbors, we are never guilty of the impropriety of mentioning them to their faces.”Mr. Coleman was crushed, and the Signora left him to recover himself as best he might. She had thought him long since cured of his national habit of making such comments, and was not disposed to suffer the slightest relapse.Marion, who had observed and watched for a moment the expression of Signor Leonardo’s face while Isabel spoke to him, began talking with him after a while, and soon found him a liberal—not one of those who make the name a cover for every species of disorder, but an honest man, of whom the worst that could be said was that he was mistaken.“You think that we Italians are different from yourselves,” he said somewhat excitedly, as the talk progressed. “When you praise your country, and boast of it, you forget that we, too, may wish to have a country of which we can boast and be proud.”Marion smiled quietly. “I should have said,” he replied, “that in the history of Italy, both past and present, there had been more pride felt and expressed than can be found in the histories of all the other nations of the earth put together; and that, besides this self-gratulation, no other nation on earth had been so praised, and loved, and feared, and sought as Italy. It has had every kind of boast—war-like, splendid, learned, poetic, and artistic. It has gone on through the centuries supreme in beauty and in interest, never failing to draw all hearts and eyes, and changing one attraction into another,instead of losing attraction. And all its changes have been ordered and harmonious till now. But I find neither beauty nor dignity in a manufacturing, trading Rome. She throws away her ownuniqueadvantages in seeking to vie with her younger and more vigorous sisters. Therôledoes not suit her.”“We will see!” the Italian said hotly. “We will make the trial, and find out for ourselves if our life and strength are so decayed that we can no longer boast of anything but ruins.”“I beg your pardon; but you have already tried, and failed,” the other returned. “You have proved yourselves only strong in complaint, but worthless in action. The only vigor I have heard of as shown by liberal Rome was in throwing flowers on Victor Emanuel when he entered, and now in cursing him for having taxed you to the verge of starvation. He isn’t afraid of you, and takes no pains to conciliate you. The only vigor here, of the kind you praise, is in the northern men he has brought down with him; and in another generation, if they should stay so long, the blood in their hearts will have thickened to the rich, slow ichor of Roman veins. No, sir! You cannot succeed in being yourselves and everybody else. You are no longer the world, but only a part of it, and must be content to see yourselves surpassed in many things. Your true dignity is in not contending for the prize which you will never win. If you had sat here quietly, a mere looker-on, a judge, perhaps, of the contests going on in the world, who could have said surely that you might not win any success by the mere half trying? You have provedyour own weakness, and merely exchanged an easy master for a hard one. You do not govern yourselves so much under the king as you did under the pope, and the complaints which were listened to in the old time nobody listens to now. You have been coaxed and petted for generations; now you are treated with contempt.”The Italian was pale, less with anger at such plain speaking than with the bitter consciousness that it was true. “You have not seen the end yet,” was all he could say. “Great changes are not wrought here so easily as in America. There it was simply Greek meeting Greek, and there was no history or tradition in the way. Here, besides our visible opponents, who may be half a dozen nations, we have to fight against generations of ghosts.”“O my country! how you have bewitched the world,” exclaimed the American. “I grant you there is a difference, sir, and it is even greater than you think; for it is a difference of nature as well as of circumstances. Italy is Calliope, with the scroll in her hand, and her proper position is a meditative and studious one; America is Atalanta, the swift runner, young, strong, and disdainful, with apples of gold to fling and stop her pursuers. Do you wish your muse to come down and join in the dusty race?”“Do you know,” the Signora asked of Marion, joining the two, “Victor Emanuel, they say, has a special devotion to the good thief?”The Italian rose. He had a great regard for the Signora, but, as she never spared him when politics was in question, he thought discretion the better part of valor.“How odd it is,” the lady remarked,when they were left alone with Marion, “that when we are best pleased we are sometimes most impatient! I am exceedingly well contented to-night, yet I do not know when I have been so sharp toward Mr. Coleman or Leonardo. I begin to feel premonitory symptoms of compunction. What is the philosophy of it, Mr. Vane?”“Marion could answer such a question better than I,” he replied. “But may not the reason be that, your mood and some of your circumstances being perfect, you cannot bear that all should not accord?—as, when we are listening to beautiful music, and are particularly inclined, to listen just then, the smallest interruption, especially if it be discordant, is intolerable.”Marion had been saying good-night to the sisters, who stood before him arm in arm, speaking with, or rather listening to, him. He turned on being appealed to.“Is it true,” he asked, “that the mood is one of perfect contentment? May it not be an exalted mood which demands contentment? I think we may sometimes feel an excitement and delight for which we can give no reason, unless it may be some rare moment of perfect physical health, like that which our first parents enjoyed in Eden. Naturally, in such a moment, we feel earth to be a paradise, and are impatient of anything which reminds us that it is not.”The Signora was surprised to find herself blushing, and annoyed when she perceived that the others observed it and seemed, also, to be surprised. Only Marion, bowing a good-night as soon as he spoke, appeared not to see.“Did you ever blush for nothing, dear?” she asked of Bianca, when the two went to their rooms together.“I can’t imagine what set me blushing to-night. I didn’t mean to blush, I had no reason, I didn’t know I was going to do so, and I have no idea what it was about.”“I never blush at the right moment,” Bianca replied rather soberly. “When embarrassing incidents occur, and, according to the books and speakers, one would be doing the proper thing to be confused, I am almost always cool. And then all at once, just for nothing, for a surprise, for a thing which would find other people cool, I am as red as—”“A rose,” finished the Signora, and kissed the girl’s cheek. “Good-night, dear. I like your friend exceedingly. I do not know when I have liked any one so much on short acquaintance.”“He is very agreeable,” Bianca returned, and echoed the good-night without another word.“That is one of the times you should have blushed, and didn’t,” thought her friend, and wondered a little.TO BE CONTINUED.

BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC.

AN ARRIVAL.

IfMr. Vane and the Signora felt any difficulty in meeting each other the next morning, it was soon over.Ce n’est que le premier pas qui coûte, and that one step brought them into the familiar path again, almost as though they had never left it. Almost, but not quite; for the entire unconsciousness of Mr. Vane’s manner impressed the lady strongly. It did not give her a new idea of him, but it emphasized the impressions she had for some time been receiving. She had never believed him to be so careless and indifferent as he often appeared to be, but it had grown upon her, little by little, that under that calm, and evennonchalant, exterior was hidden an immense self-control and watchfulness; that he could ignore things when he chose so perfectly that it was difficult to believe he had not forgotten them; and that, instead of being one of the most unobserving of men, he was, in reality, aware of everything that went on about him, seeing much which escaped ordinary lookers-on.

Such a disposition in a person in whose honesty we have not entire confidence is disconcerting, and increases our distrust of them; but it excites in us a greater interest when we know them to be honest and friendly. If they have had sorrows, we look at them with a tenderer sympathy, searching for signs of a suffering which they will notexpress; if they have revealed a peculiar affection for us, we feel either sweetly protected or painfully haunted by an attention which seldom betrays itself, and which will not be evaded.

The Signora could not have said clearly whether she was pleased or displeased. Mr. Vane had mistaken the nature of her sympathy, she thought, and, believing her to be attached to him, had spoken from gratitude; and though the conviction hurt her pride, she could not feel any resentment for a mistake kindly made on his part, and promptly corrected on hers. The only wise course was to put the matter completely out of her mind, as he seemed to have done, and to secure and enjoy the friendship she had no fear of his withdrawing.

Isabel was greatly exercised in her mind that morning on the subject of insects.

“I made up my mind in the middle of the night what I should do if I ever built a house in Italy,” she said. “I should have every stick and stone on the place carried away, a deep trench dug all around the land, and a high wall built all around the trench. Then I should have the whole surface of the ground covered with combustible material, and a fire kindled over it. When that had burned a day or two, I should have cellars, wells, drains, everything that had to beexcavated, made thoroughly, and the garden-plot well turned over. Then I should have a second conflagration, covering everything. Next would come the house-building. For that every stone should be washed and fumigated before it was brought in at the gate, and all the earth and gravel should be baked in a furnace, and every tree and shrub, and cart and donkey and workman, should be washed seven times; and finally, when the house should be finished as to the stone-work and plaster, I would have it drenched inside and out with spirits of wine, and set fire to. By taking those precautions I believe that one might have a place free of fleas. What do you think, Signora?”

“My dear, I think you would have had your labor for your pains,” was the reply. “These little creatures would hop over your walls, come in snugly hidden in your furniture, ride grandly in on the horses and in the coaches of your visitors, and even enter triumphantly on your own person. They are invincible. One must have patience.”

“I would continue to burn the place over, furniture and all, till I had routed them,” the young woman declared. “I believe it could be done. I would have patience, but it should be the patience of continual resistance, not of submission. I would not give up though I should reduce the place to ashes.”

Mr. Vane asked his daughter if she ever heard of such a process as biting off one’s nose to spite one’s face; and then he told her a very pathetic story of a man and a flea: “Once there was a man who was greatly tormented by a flea which he could never catch. In vain he searched his garments and the house. The insect hopped from place to place, but always returnedas soon as the search was over. At length, in a fit of impatience, the man hit upon a desperate project, which he did not doubt would succeed. He went softly to the seashore and, after waiting till the enemy was plainly to be felt between his shoulders, flung himself headlong into the water. But, alas! engrossed by the one thought of vengeance, he had not calculated his own peril. The waters drew him away from shore in spite of his struggles, and just as they were closing over him, with his last glimpse of earth, he saw the flea, which had hopped from him on to a passing plank, floating safely to shore again.”

“The moral is—” Mr. Vane was concluding, when his daughter interrupted him.

“I maintain that the man conquered!” she exclaimed. “That flea could never bite him again.”

This uncomfortable talk was carried on in the house, which naturally suggested it. But when they went out of doors, they left it behind them. The quaint, zigzag streets; the countless number of odd nooks in every direction; the narrow vistas here and there between close rows of houses, where a wedge of distant mountain, as blue as a lump of lapis-lazuli, seemed to be thrust between the very walls, or where the rough gray ribbon of the street became a ribbon of flowery green, silvering off into the horizon, with a city showing on it far away no larger than a daisy; the people in the streets, and all about, whose simple naturalness was more astonishing than the most unnatural behavior could have been—all these kept their eyes and minds alert.

In the midst of the town stands the church, the houses clustering about it like children about their mother’s knees. Some little childrenwere playing on the steps outside; inside, a group of women, with white handkerchiefs on their heads, were kneeling about a confessional, waiting their turns. One of them, who had confessed, came slowly away, and went toward the high altar, touching here and there with a small staff she carried, her eyes looking straight ahead.

The Signora stepped quickly forward to remove a chair from her path. “You are blind!” she whispered pitifully.

The old woman smiled, and turned toward the voice a face of serious sweetness, as she made the reply ofSt.Clara: “She is not blind who sees God!”

She reached the altar-railing, and knelt there to wait for the Mass. Where she knelt the one sunbeam that found its way into the church so early fell over her. Feeling its warmth like a gentle touch, she lifted her face to it and smiled again.

The children, weary of their play, came in and wandered about the church. One, finding its mother among the penitents, went to lean on her lap. She smoothed its pretty curls absently with one hand, while the other slipped bead after bead of her chaplet, her lips moving rapidly. Another, seeing the hand of the priest resting on the door of the confessional, just under the curtain, went to kiss it, standing on tiptoe, and straining up to reach the fingers with its baby mouth. A third, seeing some one near it kneel before the altar, made a liliputian genuflection, and went down on its knees in the middle of the church, a mere dot in that space, and remained there looking innocently about, uncomprehending but unquestioning. Another dreamed along the side of the church, looking at the familiar pictures,and presently, climbing with some difficulty the steps of one of the altars, seated itself and began softly to stroke the cheeks of a marble cherub that supported the altar-table.

If a company of baby angels had come in, they would not have made less noise nor done less harm; perhaps, would not have done more good.

“How peaceful it is!” Mr. Vane exclaimed as they went out into the air again. “How heavenly peaceful!”

They saw only women and children on their way down through the town. Some of the men had gone off in the night to Rome, carrying wine in those carts of theirs, with the awning slung like a galley-sail over the driver’s seat, and the cluster of bells atop, each tinkling in a different tone, and the little white dog keeping watch over the barrels while the man dozed. Others had gone at day-dawn to work in the Campagna, and might be seen from the town moving, as small as spiders, among the vines or in the gardens.

Just below the great piazza, at the entrance of the town, beside the dip of the road into the hollow betweenMonte CompatriandMonte San Sylvestro, a long, tiled roof was visible supported on arches. They leaned over the parapet supporting the road, and watched for a little while the lively scene below. All the space beneath this roof was an immense tank of water, or fountain, as it was called, divided into square compartments. Around these stood forty or fifty women washing. They soaped and dipped their clothes in the constantly-changing water, and beat them on the wide stone border of the fountain, working leisurely, and chatting with each other. Thewhite handkerchiefs on their heads, and, now and then, a bit of bright drapery on their shoulders, shone out of the shadow made by the roof and the piers supporting it, and the rich green of that sheltered nook between the hills. It was, in fact, the town wash-tub, and this was the town wash-day. In this place the women washed the year round, in the open air, and with cold water, spreading their clothes out to dry on the grass and bushes.

The travellers went upMonte San Sylvestro, gathering flowers as they went. The path was rough and wild, winding to and fro among the bushes as it climbed, and hidden, from time to time, by tall trees. Half way up they met a man with a herd of goats rushing and tumbling down the steep way. A little farther on, at a turn of the road, was a large shrine holding a crucifix. The place seemed to be an absolute solitude, but the withered flowers drooping from the wire screen, and the sod, worn to dust, at the foot of the step, showed that faith and love had passed that way, and stopped in passing. Near this shrine was a protruding ledge, from under which the gravel had dropped away or been dug away, leaving a sort of cave. The place needed only a gray-bearded old man clad in rags, and bending over an open book, an hour-glass before him, and perhaps a lion lying at his feet. Or one might have placed there the Magdalen, with her long hair trailing in the sand, and her woful eyes looking off into the distant east, as she gazed across the blue ocean from her cave on the coast of France. There was still faith enough in this region to have honored and protected such a penitent.

The three women gathered some green to go with their flowers, clearedaway all the withered stems and leaves, and wrote in pink and white and blue around the edge of the screen. When they had done all that they could well reach, Mr. Vane finished for them by writing last, over the head of the crucifix, the word that in reality came first. Then they went on, leaving the symbol of all that Heaven could do for earth encircled by the expression of all that earth can do for Heaven—“Credo, Spero, Amo, Ringrazio, Pento.” They wrote these words in flowers, Bianca weaving a verdant Hope at the right hand, Isabel a white Thanksgiving at the left, and the Signora placing a rose-red Love and Penitence under the feet. Over the head Mr. Vane had set in blue the word of Faith.

The summit of the mountain was crowned with the convent and church ofSt.Sylvester; but the buildings extended quite to the edge of the platform on the eastern side, and the fine view was from the gardens on the west side, and, of course, inaccessible to ladies. They could only obtain glimpses over the tops of trees that climbed from below, and through the trunks of trees that pressed close to the corners of the stone barriers. No person was visible but a monk in a brown robe and a broad-brimmed hat, who lingered near a moment, as if to give them an opportunity to speak to him if they wished, then entered a long court leading to the convent door, and disappeared under the portico.

A perfect silence reigned. They heard nothing but their own steps on the grassy pavement. The town ofMonte Compatri, seen through the trees on the other height, looked more like a gray rock than a city. Not a sign of life was visible from it. The glimpses they caught of theCampagna had seemed fragments of a vast green solitude where grass had long overgrown the traces of men. No smallest cloud gave life or motion to the steady blue overhead; no song of bird wove a silver link between familiar scenes and that solemn retreat. The soul, stripped of its veiling cares and interests, was like Moses on the mountain, face to face with God. History, mythology, poetry—they were not! The buzzing of these golden bees that made the brow of Tusculum their hive was inaudible and forgotten. On this height was a station-house of eternity, and the electric current of the other world flowed through its blue and silent air.

“It seems to me one should prepare one’s mind before going there,” Bianca said, looking back from the foot of the mountain, after they had descended. They had scarcely spoken a word going down.

The impression made on them was, indeed, so strong that they scarcely observed anything about them for several hours; and it was only when they were going down to Frascati again in the afternoon that they roused themselves from their silence.

“We shall have time to go into Villa Aldobrandini a little while,” the Signora said, looking at her watch. “The train does not start for more than an hour. We can send the man on to the station with our bags, and walk down ourselves. Of course all these villas have very nearly the same view, but this is the finest of all.”

They had time for a short visit only, but their guide made the most of it. Going round one of the circling avenues, dark with ancient ilex-trees, she turned into a cross-road that led directly to the upper centre of the villa, where the cascadesbegan. First, from under a tomb-like door in the side of a mound, flowed a swift ribbon of water between stone borders. It slanted with the hill, and flashed along silent in the sunshine, eager to leap through the mouth of the great mask below, to scatter its spray over carven stone and a hundred flowers.

They followed the cascades down to the lower front, with its niches, statues, chapel, and chambers, and the noblecasinofacing it.

“Every story of the house, as you go up,” the Signora said, “brings you on a level with a new cascade, and from the topmost room you look into the heart of the upper thicket, where you might imagine yourself unseen. Indeed, splendid as these scenes are, there is, to me, a constant sense of discomfort in that frequent appearance of solitude where solitude is not. There seems to be no nook, however apparently remote, which is not perfectly overlooked from some almost invisible watch-tower. It may be necessary, but the suggestion is of suspicion and espionage.”

They left the villa by the front avenue and lawn, walking through grass and flowers ankle deep, and gathering handfuls of dear, familiar pennyroyal that they found growing all about.

When they reached the station there was yet a little time to wait, and they stood in the western windows and looked off to the distant ridges that showed their dark edges against intervening layers of silvery mist. They were ridges of jewels, marked thickly with spires, towers, and palaces. At the left the dome of the world’s temple was visible, making everything else of its sort puny, and next it, like the outline of a forest against the sky, the Quirinalstretched its royal front. All floated in that delicate mist that, from the distance, always veils the Campagna, as if the innumerable ghosts of the past became luminous when so seen, evading for ever the nearer spectator.

Framing this distant picture, a hill of olives at one side of the station-house sloped to a hill of vines at the other, and the railroad track, set in roses, curved round in the narrow strip of land between them.

The Signora, putting her arm around Bianca, and pointing to one of these ridges, whispered in her ear: “What does my darling think that is—the two dark spots shaped like two thimbles, and about as large, and the something that might be a lead-pencil standing up between them? What blessedcampanileand twincupoledo you wish them to be?”

“Oh! I was searching for them,” the girl exclaimed, and kissed her hand to the far-away basilica. “We must go there a few minutes this evening,” she added—“go up the steps, at least, if it should be too late to go in.”

They started, and went trailing along through the enchanted land, happy to return to the city that already seemed to them like home, and, having learnt some landmarks in their outward passage, added to the number of their acquisitions in returning. The Signora indicated the principal tombs and named the aqueducts. “There are the Claudian and Marcian, side by side, galloping over the plain like a pair of coursers, each bringing a lake in its veins to quench the thirst of Rome. SixtusV., who built our chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, Bianca, used those Claudian arches to bring a new stream in when the old one failed. It is called AquaFelice. His name was Felice Peretti.”

“Stia felice!” said Bianca, smiling at the grand old arches.

“In what a circle water goes,” she added after a moment, “and what a beautiful circle!—down in the rain, running in the river, where the wheel touches the earth, rising on the sunbeams, running in clouds, where the wheel touches the sky, dropping in rain again, and so on round and round.”

“Apropos of SixtusV.,” the Signora said to Mr. Vane, “see how the church recognizes and rewards merit. It is, in fact, the only true republic. That wonderful man was a swineherd in Montalto when he was a boy, and Cardinal of Montalto when he was a man, and he died one of the most brilliant popes that ever wore the tiara. One cannot help wondering what the boy Felice thought of in those days when he watched the swine, and if ever a vision came to him of kings kneeling to kiss his feet. And, more yet, I wonder what thoughts the mother had of his future when she watched over her sleeping child, or looked after him when he went out to his day’s task. He could not have been so great but that his mother gave the first impulse. One does not gather figs of thistles.”

“I agree with you about the mother,” Mr. Vane replied cordially. “I don’t believe any man ever accomplished much of real worth in life without his mother having set him on the track of it. Sometimes a noble mother has a son who does not do justice to her example and teaching. But even then, if her duty has been fully done, she may be sure that he is the better for it, though not so good as he should be. I am sure I owe it to my mother that, though my life has notbenefited the world much, my sins have been rather of omission than of commission. Come to think of it, I have never done her any particular credit; but I am happy to be able to say that I have never done her any great discredit.”

While he spoke, his face half-turned toward the window, his manner more energetic than was usual with him, the large blue eyes of the Signora rested on him with an expression of grave kindness and interest. When he ended, she leaned slightly toward him, smiling, and tossed him a rose she had drawn from her belt, repeating Bianca’s exclamation: “Stia felice!”

His fingers closed on the stem of the rose which had touched his hand, and he held it, but did not turn his face, seeming to wait for her to go on.

“You should read Padre Ventura,” she said, “though, indeed, you have less need than most men. I would like to put hisLa Donna Cattolicainto the hands of every Catholic—yes, and of every Protestant. I would like the Woman’s Rights women, and those who think that Christianity and the church have degraded us, and some Catholics too, to learn fromSt.Chrysostom,St.Jerome, and Gregory the Great what estimate Christian women should be held in. It would do them good to read the works of this eloquent priest, who speaks with authority, and ennobles himself in honoring the sisters of the Queen of angels. Padre Ventura must have had a beautiful soul. I fancy that his ashes even must be whiter than the ashes of most men. I always judge men’s characters by their estimate of women, and what they seek in women by what they say is to be found in them.”

“This author is dead, then?” Mr. Vane remarked, looking attentively at the Signora in his turn.

“Yes. He died years before I had ever heard his name. When you have read something of his, you may like to visit his tomb inSt.Andrea delle Valle. The stone over his sepulchre is in the pavement, about half way up the nave, and there’s a fine monument in the transept on the epistle side. I wish every Christian woman who visits Rome would drop a flower on the stone that covers all that was earthly of that man, and remember for a moment the place he assigns her in her home and in the world. ‘The man,’ he says, ‘is the king of the family; the woman is the priest.’”

She was silent, pursuing the subject mentally, then added: “He says so many beautiful things. Describing the different kinds of courage with which the Christian martyrs and certain celebrated pagans met death, he speaks of one as ‘the modesty and humility that throws itself into the arms of hope, to rest there,’ and the other as ‘the pride that immolates itself to desperation, in order to lose itself there.’ One he calls ‘the sublime of virtue,’ and the other ‘the sublime of vice.’ He had mentioned Socrates and Cato in the connection.”

They had reached the station while this talk was going on, and, coming out into the piazza, separated there, the Signora and Bianca coming down by one of the fine new streets to pay a visit to their basilica on the way home. They found the door just closed, it being half an hour beforeAve Maria; but it was a pleasure to walk a while on the long platform at the head of the steps, bathed in the red gold of the setting sun, that gilded, but did not scorch; to look up at the fringe ofpink flowers growing in spikes at the top of the façade, and at the flocks of little gray birds that flew about among them; and to glance up or down the streets that stretched off like rays from the sun, and then to stroll slowly homeward through the lounging, motley crowd.

They met Mr. Vane and Isabel at the door.

“Did you think we also might not visit a church?” Isabel said. “I invited papa to go intoSt.Bernard’s, and, though they were about closing, they kept open ten minutes for us. I am not sure but I may adopt that church as my favorite. It is not too large. The congregations are orderly, and all attend to one service; and, besides, I like a rotunda. If I should go there, papa, you must side with me, that the house may be equally divided.”

“I’m not sure I like those cherubic churches, all head and no nave,” Mr. Vane replied. “The basilica, being modelled on the human body, has a more human feeling.”

The door opened before they rang, and the servants, having been on the watch, welcomed them with smiling faces, kissing the hand of the Signora. It was impossible not to believe in, and be touched by, their sincerity and affection, which expressed themselves, not in looks and words alone, but in actions. The house showed plainly, by its exquisite cleanliness, that the absence of the mistress had not been a holiday for them; and they had prepared everything they could to please her, even to filling all the smaller vases with her favorite flowers.

“You haven’t been spending your money for violets, you extravagant children!” she exclaimed.

They had been watching to see if she would notice them, and weredelighted with her surprise and pleasure.

No, they had not spent money, but only time and strength. They had gathered the flowers themselves in Villa Borghese.

“I do not take on myself to decide great social questions,” the Signora said, as they sat talking over their supper. “I could not decide them if I would. But this I must think: that, in most cases, little happiness is to be found for people except in the position in which they were born. Look at these two good creatures who serve us. Their parents before them were servants, and they do not expect or wish to be anything more. They want the rights their claim to which they understand perfectly—fair wages, not too hard work, and an occasional holiday. They know that the fatigues of the great, the wealthy, and the ambitious are greater than theirs, though of a different sort. If wealth were to drop upon them, they would grasp it, no doubt, but it would embarrass them. They would never strive for it. Do you know, I find their position dignified, even when they black my shoes. It’s a nicer thing to do than toadying for fine friends, or striving for place, or gnawing one’s heart out with envy.”

Mr. Vane smiled slightly.

“How is it about your swineherd, who changed his rough straw hat for a triple crown, and had the royalty and nobility of centuries come to kiss the foot that once hadn’t even a shoe to it?”

“Oh!” she replied, “the church is the beginning of the kingdom of heaven on earth, and the meek and the poor in spirit possess it already. Besides, I always make exception of those whom God has especially endowed with gifts of nature orgrace, or with both. Besides, again, this man did not seek greatness; it was conferred on him.”

Isabel felt called on to show her colors.

“America for ever!” she said. “Europe will do very well for the great, and for those who are willing to remain small; but inmycountry there’s a fair field for everybody. Everybody there is born to as high a position as he can work his way to, and his destiny is not in the beginning of his life, but in the end of it. We are like Adams and Eves new-made, and dominion is given us over the garden of the new world.”

She paused for breath, and the Signora applauded. “Brava! I am willing you should defeat me. I will call America not only the garden, but the nursery-garden, of the new world, if you like. Long live your seedlings!”

“How would you like it,” the girl went on, rather red in the cheeks—“how would you like it, if you had been born in some very humble position in life, instead of in the position of a lady, to have some one tell you not to try to rise, but to stay where you were? Just take it to yourself.”

“If I had been so born I should have been a different sort of person, and cannot say how I should have felt,” the Signora replied tranquilly. “If I had been a product of generations of obedience, instead of generations of command, do not you see that the marriages would have been different, the habits, the traditions, the education, everything but the immortal spark and the common human nature? Or, if I had been like what I am now, I think I should have looked for, and found, the beauties and pleasures in my path.” She had been speakingvery quietly, but here she drew herself up a little, and a slight color rose to her face as she went on: “I have never striven for any of those things the chase of which seems so mean to me. It has never occurred to me that I might be honored by any association, except with a person either very good or very highly gifted by nature. The only rank which impresses me is that in the church. For the rest—you have heard the expression, ‘a distinction without a difference.’”

Isabel gave a puzzled sigh. “I never could understand you,” she said, a little impatiently. “Sometimes you seem to me the haughtiest of women; sometimes I think you not half proud enough. One moment you seem to be a red republican, the next an aristocrat. I can’t make out what you really are. You graduate your bows to an inch, according to the rank you salute. I’ve seen your eyes flash lightning at a person for being too familiar toward you; and then I find you talking about the rights of the people almost like a communist.”

The Signora was crumbling a bit of bread while she listened, and did not look up in answering: “I am quite ashamed of having made myself the subject of conversation for so long a time. Excuse me! Shall we go out to theloggiafor a little while? It is very warm here.”

“Permit me!” Mr. Vane interposed. He had been looking at his daughter with great displeasure. “I would say, Isabel, that when you shall have thought and learned more, you will, I hope, understand the Signora better than you do now, and will try to imitate the justice which can give to all their due, and not rob Peter to pay Paul. Moreover, I would remind you that an intrusive familiarity is nota right of any one, even to an inferior. And now, Signora, shall we go to theloggia?”

Perhaps it was because she had never before been so sharply criticised to her face; but the Signora had, certainly, never before known how pleasant it is to be defended. This pleasure showed itself in her manner as they went out. She usually held herself rather erect, and had an air of composure which might easily be called pride; but now there was a slight drooping of the head and bending of the form which gave her an appearance of softness, as of one who droops content under a protecting shadow. It was a softness which she, perhaps, needed.

They heard the door-bell ringing as they went up theloggiasteps, and presently an exclamation in Isabel’s clear voice. She had not followed them, they now perceived, being a little displeased or hurt at the reproof to which she had been subjected.

“Who can have come?” said the Signora, listening. “It seems to be some one whom Isabel knows.”

Bianca stood at the railing and looked intently at the windows of thesala, faintly lighted from the room beyond. Two figures passed through the dimness and disappeared. They might be coming to theloggia, or they might be going to the sofa under that picture of Penelope and Ulysses—the Signora and Mr. Vane, both a little preoccupied, did not notice or care which. If any one wished to see them, he could come to them.

Bianca, alone, stood looking steadily. The full moon, shining in her face, had showed it for one moment as red as a rose; but as the minutes passed, that lovely color faded, growing paler, till itwas whiter than the light that veiled it, sparkling like silver on its beautiful outlines. Where was the sweet confidence that had been growing up in her heart for the last few weeks? Gone like a cloud-house built on a cloud. She was terrified at the fear and pain that had taken the place of it, and began to lose sight of the cause in trembling at the magnitude of the effect.

“It is surely wrong that anything in the world should make me feel so,” she murmured. “What have I been doing? I must have thought of this too much, and now is come my punishment. Here in Rome, where we shall stay but a few months, I ought to have given all my mind and heart to religion. It is a shame that I have not. I do not deserve the privilege of being here.”

She strove to gather about her mind the sacred thoughts and associations which the Christian finds in the heart of the Christian world, to dwarf with the grand interests of eternity the passing interests of time, and she was in some measure successful, to the extent, at least, of inspiring herself with resolution, if not with peace.

“Oh! how terrible is life,” she said, looking upward, as if to escape the sight of it. “How it catches us unawares, sometimes, and wrings the blood out of our hearts!” The prayer that always rose to her lips in any necessity, “We fly to thy patronage,” escaped them now; and then she swiftly and firmly read to herself her lesson: “I will be friendly and gentle toward him. I will neither seek him nor shrink from him, nor show any foolish consciousness, if I can help it; and I will not be angry with Isabel. If he should care for me in the wayI have thought, he will come every step of the way for me; if he should not, I shall not win either respect or affection by putting myself in his way. For the rest, I will trust my future with God.”

“Bianca,” said her sister’s voice at her elbow, “who do you think has come?”

Whatever might happen, it was a pleasure to meet him, and there was no effort or embarrassment in her greeting. That moment of pain and recollection had lifted her merely earthly affection so that it became touched with the serious sweetness of heavenly charity, as the mist, lifting at morning from the bosom of the river, where it has hung through the dark hours, grows silver in the upper light. She held out her hand and smiled. “You are welcome! Papa, here is an old friend of ours.”

The Signora was instantly all attention. Her own affairs were quite forgotten in those of her beloved young favorite. She was eager to see this man, to watch him, to understand him. If he should suit her and be good to Bianca, there was nothing she would not do for him; if he should be lacking in principle, or in kindness to her darling, woe to him! She would most certainly—

And here, just as she was meditating in what way she could most fittingly punish him without hurting any one else, he turned, at Mr. Vane’s introduction, and saluted her with a smile and glance that won her completely. It was not the meeting of two strangers. He had thought of his lady’s guardian with almost as much interest, perhaps, as she had thought of her friend’s lover, and had expected to find in her either a help or a hindrance. Her searching regard hadnot disconcerted, then, but reassured him rather.

The Signora soon made an excuse to go into the house a moment, and left the Vanes and their visitor to renew their intercourse without interruption, and go through the mutual questioning of friends reunited after many and varied experiences. Returning quietly after a while, she stood in a corner of theloggiaand observed them. Mr. Vane sat with a daughter at either side, and Marion stood opposite them, leaning back against the railing and talking. The moon shone in his face and flowed down his form, investing both, or revealing in both, a beauty inexpressibly noble and graceful. One might say that he looked as if he had been formed to music. A gold bronze color in his hair showed where the light struck fully, a flash of dusky blue came now and then from under his thick eye-lashes, and when he smiled one knew that his teeth were perfect and snowy white. His voice, too, was very pleasant, with a sound of laughter in it when he talked gayly—a laughter like that we fancy in a brook. It was as though his thoughts and fancies sparkled as they passed into the air.

“He is certainly fascinating,” the Signora thought. “I hope he does not try to be so.”

He did not. No one could be more unconscious of the effect produced by what was personal in his talk than Marion. If he sometimes appeared, while talking, almost to forget his company, it was not because he thought of himself, but because he was absorbed in his subject. He saw plainly before his eyes that which he described, and he made others see it. Bright, animated, varied, passing, not abruptly, but with the grace of a bird thatswims through the air, and alights for a moment, now here, now there, on a tree, a shrine, a house-top, a mountain-top, a window-ledge with an inside view, he carried his listeners along with him, charmed and unconscious of time. He knew that they were pleased, but gave the credit to the subject, and thought nothing of himself. He would have kept silent if he had believed he could be thought talking for effect.

The Signora stood a smiling and unseen listener to his description of his journey, and felt her sympathy and admiration increase every moment for the man who, in a hackneyed experience, had seen so much at every moment that was fresh and new, and, travelling the beaten ways of life, had found gems among the worn pebbles, had even broken the pebbles themselves, and revealed a precious color sparkling inside.

“If only he could find so much in worn and hackneyed people!” she thought. “If he could compel the cold, the conventional, and the mean to break the dull crust that has accumulated around the original nature of them, what a boon it would be! There must be something tolerable, perhaps a capacity for becoming even admirable, left in the lowest. I would like to have him point it out or call it out; for sometimes my charity fails.”

His recital finished, he stood an instant silent, looking down; then a swift glance probed the shadowed corner where the Signora stood, showing that he had all the while known she was there. It was not the inquisitive nor intrusive look of one who wishes to show a knowledge of what another has tried to hide from him, but a pleasant glance that sought her presence,and begged her not to separate herself from them.

She came forward immediately, more pleased at the frank invitation than if he had pretended to be unaware of her presence.

“I feel bound, in honor, to declare my intentions to you, Signora,” he said; “for you may look on me as a foe when you know them, and it is but right you should have fair warning. I have been told that you are disposed to win this family for Rome, and I am equally disposed to keep them in America. I should despair of success in such a rivalry but that I believe I have right on my side. Is it peace or war?”

“Peace,” she replied. “I cannot war against right, and I ought not to wish against it. Moreover, since the family are the majority, and have free will, we can only try to influence, but must leave them to decide. I am sorry, though, that you distrust Rome so.”

“Oh! it is not that,” he said quickly, “though, indeed, I do distrust Rome for some people—or rather, I distrust some people for Rome. I have known cases of the most deplorable deterioration of character here in persons who were considered at home a little better than the average. But that was not my thought in this instance. I hope our friends will return to America for other reasons. No one should, it seems to me, expatriate himself without a sort of necessity. The native land assigned us by Providence would seem to be the theatre in which it is our duty to act, and one of the motives of our visits to other countries should be to enrich our own with whatever of good we may find there. Every country needs its children; but America particularly needs all her good citizens, and the church in Americaneeds good Catholics. That is not a true Christian who spends a whole life abroad without necessity. The climate is not an excuse, for we have every climate; economy has ceased to be a sufficient motive; and mere pleasure is no reason for a Catholic to give.”

“What, then, may be considered a good reason?” the Signora asked, wondering if she were to be included in the catalogue of the condemned.

“An artist may study here a good many years,” was the reply. “The sculptor or the painter finds here his school. But I maintain that when the sculptor and painter are out of school, and begin to work in the strength of their own genius, if they have any, their place and their subjects are to be found in their own land. If they stay here they will never come to anything. They will only produce trite and worn-out imitations. The writer has a longer mission here, perhaps the longest; for thoughts are at home in every land, and that is the best where thoughts can best clothe themselves in words. There is another class who must be allowed to choose for themselves, though it would be better if they would choose to endure to the end in their own country—that is, certain tender souls from whom have been stripped friends and home, leaving them bare to a world that wounds them too much. Here, I have been assured and can well believe, they find a contentment not possible to them anywhere else. Their imaginations had flown here in childhood and youth, and had unconsciously made a nest to which they could themselves follow at need, and find a sort of repose. If they have not the courage or the strength to stay in the midst of our ceaseless, andsometimes even merciless, activity, I have not a word of blame for them. I would not breathe, even gently, against the bruised reeds.”

He spoke with such tender feeling that for a moment no one said anything; then he added, smiling: “I hope the Signora does not think me too dogmatic.”

“I think you are quite right,” she replied.

“You have forgotten one large class of Americans who may be excused, and even lauded and encouraged, for taking up a permanent residence in Europe,” Mr. Vane said.

“What, pray?”

“Snobs,” he replied solemnly.

The subject was whirled away on a little laugh, and a change of position showed them Annunciata on the shadowed side of theloggia, making coffee at a little table there, at the same time that Adreano offered them ices and cake. The place where the girl stood was quite darkened by the wall of Carlin’s studio and by an over-growing grape-vine, and the moonlight about revealed of her only a dark outline. But the flame of the spirit she was burning threw a pale blue light into her face and over her hands, flickering so that the light seemed rather to shine from, than on, her.

“It looks Plutonian,” Marion said. “We are, perhaps, on a visit to Proserpine.”

“Speaking of Proserpine reminds, me of pomegranate-seeds,” the Signora said; “and pomegranate-seeds remind me of something I heard very prettily said last summer by a very pretty young lady. We were in Subiaco, and had risen very early in the morning to go up to the church ofSt.Benedict. I noticed that Lily was very serious andsilent, so did not speak, but only looked at her while we waited a little in thesalafor another member of our party. She walked slowly up and down, and seemed to be praying; presently, as if recollecting that we had a difficult climb before us, she seated herself near a table on which a servant had just piled up the fruit she had been buying. Among it was a pomegranate, broken open, and bleeding a drop or two of crimson juice out on to the dark wood. Lily drew a small, pointed leaf from an orange stem, and made a knife of it to separate the grains of the pomegranate, presently lifted one, and then another, and another to her mouth. I only thought how pretty her daintiness was as she absently fed like a bird, when all at once she turned as crimson as the juicy grain she had just eaten, and sprang up from the table, throwing the leaf away, and uttering an exclamation of such distress that I thought she must have been poisoned. Her exclamation was odd: ‘O Pluto!’

“‘You see,’ she explained after a minute, ‘I was saying the rosary, and had finished it, when I caught sight of the fruit here. And I thought then that, though our prayers may be flowers before the throne, our actions are fruits. Then I sat down to look at the pomegranate, and wondered what sort of a good action it was like; and while I wondered, I got tangled in a thicket of similitudes, and wandered off into mythology; and as I divided the grains I remembered poor Proserpine, and how Pluto, who knew well she could not leave him after having eaten, induced her to eat three pomegranate grains. I wondered if they were just like these, and how they tasted to her,and put one and another in my mouth, imagining myself in her place, and that presently my mother would come seeking me, and want to carry me back to heaven with her, and would find that I could not go because of these same pomegranate seeds. And then, my mind catching on the word Mother, which I had just been repeating on my rosary so many times, I remembered the Mother of God, and began to search for some Christian meaning in the myth. I thought Ceres was the giver of wheat and grain, therefore of bread, and Mary gave us the Bread of Life. Ceres came searching and mourning for her daughter, snatched away by the prince of darkness, and Mary watches and prays over those whom the enemy has snatched away from the garden of God, and who cry out to her for help. Ceres found that her daughter, having tasted of the fruit of the lower regions, was bound to spend one-half of her life there. Before I had time to find a Christian parallel for that part of the story, it flashed over me that my three pomegranate-seeds had cost me heaven for to-day, and deprived me of a privilege I might never have again. O Signora! I was going to receive Communion to-day in the grotto ofSt.Benedict!’”

“It is not often,” the Signora added, “that one can retrace the wandering path of a reverie as my poor Lily did. Her story reminded me of an illustrated poem, with wheat and roses wreathed around the leaves and hanging in among the verses.”

The bell announcing visitors, they went into the house again, and found Mr. Coleman and Signor Leonardo, the latter having come to see when his pupils would wish to resume their lessons.

“I can assure you, Signor, that I am the only one who has thought of study during the last three days,” Isabel said. “You should commend me. I have faithfully learned an irregular verb every morning while taking my coffee. That is my rule; and it is becoming such a habit with me that the mere sight of a cup and saucer suggests to me an irregular verb. The night we spent at Monte Compatri I learned three, not being able to sleep for the fleas.”

The Italian murmured some inarticulate commendation of her industry, and dropped his eyes. Her perfectly free and off-hand manner confounded him. To his mind such a lack of the downcast reserve of the girls he was accustomed to regard as models of behavior indicated a very strange disposition and an education still more strange. Yet he could not doubt that Miss Vane was respectable.

Mr. Coleman, who was hovering near, begged permission to make a comment, which he would not be thought to intend as a criticism. “You say the night you ‘spent’ at Monte Compatri. Is it, may I ask, true that Americans always speak ofspendingtime? In England we say wepasstime. I have heard the peculiarity attributed to your nation, the reason given for it being that Americans are almost always engaged in business of some kind, and naturally use the expressions of trade.”

Isabel not being quite prepared with an answer, hesitating whether to regard the suave manner or the annoying matter of the speech, the Signora, who had overheard it, came to her aid.

“The fact is true, but the reason given is false,” she said. “I believe we Americans do almost alwaysspeak of spending time. It may be because we understand better the value of it. But you should be aware, Mr. Coleman, that the Italians also use the same expression, and they are the last people with whom you can associate the idea of trade and hurry. One of their critics cites the word as peculiarly beautiful so employed, as if time were held to be gold. Your English friends, when criticising the American expression, were probably thinking of their great clumsy pennies.”

Mr. Coleman, who had not known that the Signora was near, stammered out a deprecating word. He had only asked for information.

“The English are bound to criticise us, and to regard our differences as defects,” she went on, addressing Isabel. “You must not mind them, my dear. In fact, educated Americans speak and write the language better than the same class of English do, and use far less slang. One frequently finds inaccurate and cumbersome expressions in their very best writers. The exquisite Disraeli says, ‘I should have thought that you would have liked,’ which is ineffably clumsy. I can give you, however, a model of the most perfect English in an English writer, and I do not know an American who equals him. I refer to T. W.M.Marshall. I almost forget his thoughts while admiring the faultless language in which they are—not clothed so much as—armed. He has little color, but a great deal of point. One might say he writes inchiar-oscuro.

“I have not the least prejudice against, nor for, any nation,” she continued, regarding with a little mocking smile her disconcerted visitor. “English people are as good as Americans, when they behavethemselves. They are not, however, so polite. Whatever peculiarities we may observe in our island neighbors, we are never guilty of the impropriety of mentioning them to their faces.”

Mr. Coleman was crushed, and the Signora left him to recover himself as best he might. She had thought him long since cured of his national habit of making such comments, and was not disposed to suffer the slightest relapse.

Marion, who had observed and watched for a moment the expression of Signor Leonardo’s face while Isabel spoke to him, began talking with him after a while, and soon found him a liberal—not one of those who make the name a cover for every species of disorder, but an honest man, of whom the worst that could be said was that he was mistaken.

“You think that we Italians are different from yourselves,” he said somewhat excitedly, as the talk progressed. “When you praise your country, and boast of it, you forget that we, too, may wish to have a country of which we can boast and be proud.”

Marion smiled quietly. “I should have said,” he replied, “that in the history of Italy, both past and present, there had been more pride felt and expressed than can be found in the histories of all the other nations of the earth put together; and that, besides this self-gratulation, no other nation on earth had been so praised, and loved, and feared, and sought as Italy. It has had every kind of boast—war-like, splendid, learned, poetic, and artistic. It has gone on through the centuries supreme in beauty and in interest, never failing to draw all hearts and eyes, and changing one attraction into another,instead of losing attraction. And all its changes have been ordered and harmonious till now. But I find neither beauty nor dignity in a manufacturing, trading Rome. She throws away her ownuniqueadvantages in seeking to vie with her younger and more vigorous sisters. Therôledoes not suit her.”

“We will see!” the Italian said hotly. “We will make the trial, and find out for ourselves if our life and strength are so decayed that we can no longer boast of anything but ruins.”

“I beg your pardon; but you have already tried, and failed,” the other returned. “You have proved yourselves only strong in complaint, but worthless in action. The only vigor I have heard of as shown by liberal Rome was in throwing flowers on Victor Emanuel when he entered, and now in cursing him for having taxed you to the verge of starvation. He isn’t afraid of you, and takes no pains to conciliate you. The only vigor here, of the kind you praise, is in the northern men he has brought down with him; and in another generation, if they should stay so long, the blood in their hearts will have thickened to the rich, slow ichor of Roman veins. No, sir! You cannot succeed in being yourselves and everybody else. You are no longer the world, but only a part of it, and must be content to see yourselves surpassed in many things. Your true dignity is in not contending for the prize which you will never win. If you had sat here quietly, a mere looker-on, a judge, perhaps, of the contests going on in the world, who could have said surely that you might not win any success by the mere half trying? You have provedyour own weakness, and merely exchanged an easy master for a hard one. You do not govern yourselves so much under the king as you did under the pope, and the complaints which were listened to in the old time nobody listens to now. You have been coaxed and petted for generations; now you are treated with contempt.”

The Italian was pale, less with anger at such plain speaking than with the bitter consciousness that it was true. “You have not seen the end yet,” was all he could say. “Great changes are not wrought here so easily as in America. There it was simply Greek meeting Greek, and there was no history or tradition in the way. Here, besides our visible opponents, who may be half a dozen nations, we have to fight against generations of ghosts.”

“O my country! how you have bewitched the world,” exclaimed the American. “I grant you there is a difference, sir, and it is even greater than you think; for it is a difference of nature as well as of circumstances. Italy is Calliope, with the scroll in her hand, and her proper position is a meditative and studious one; America is Atalanta, the swift runner, young, strong, and disdainful, with apples of gold to fling and stop her pursuers. Do you wish your muse to come down and join in the dusty race?”

“Do you know,” the Signora asked of Marion, joining the two, “Victor Emanuel, they say, has a special devotion to the good thief?”

The Italian rose. He had a great regard for the Signora, but, as she never spared him when politics was in question, he thought discretion the better part of valor.

“How odd it is,” the lady remarked,when they were left alone with Marion, “that when we are best pleased we are sometimes most impatient! I am exceedingly well contented to-night, yet I do not know when I have been so sharp toward Mr. Coleman or Leonardo. I begin to feel premonitory symptoms of compunction. What is the philosophy of it, Mr. Vane?”

“Marion could answer such a question better than I,” he replied. “But may not the reason be that, your mood and some of your circumstances being perfect, you cannot bear that all should not accord?—as, when we are listening to beautiful music, and are particularly inclined, to listen just then, the smallest interruption, especially if it be discordant, is intolerable.”

Marion had been saying good-night to the sisters, who stood before him arm in arm, speaking with, or rather listening to, him. He turned on being appealed to.

“Is it true,” he asked, “that the mood is one of perfect contentment? May it not be an exalted mood which demands contentment? I think we may sometimes feel an excitement and delight for which we can give no reason, unless it may be some rare moment of perfect physical health, like that which our first parents enjoyed in Eden. Naturally, in such a moment, we feel earth to be a paradise, and are impatient of anything which reminds us that it is not.”

The Signora was surprised to find herself blushing, and annoyed when she perceived that the others observed it and seemed, also, to be surprised. Only Marion, bowing a good-night as soon as he spoke, appeared not to see.

“Did you ever blush for nothing, dear?” she asked of Bianca, when the two went to their rooms together.“I can’t imagine what set me blushing to-night. I didn’t mean to blush, I had no reason, I didn’t know I was going to do so, and I have no idea what it was about.”

“I never blush at the right moment,” Bianca replied rather soberly. “When embarrassing incidents occur, and, according to the books and speakers, one would be doing the proper thing to be confused, I am almost always cool. And then all at once, just for nothing, for a surprise, for a thing which would find other people cool, I am as red as—”

“A rose,” finished the Signora, and kissed the girl’s cheek. “Good-night, dear. I like your friend exceedingly. I do not know when I have liked any one so much on short acquaintance.”

“He is very agreeable,” Bianca returned, and echoed the good-night without another word.

“That is one of the times you should have blushed, and didn’t,” thought her friend, and wondered a little.

TO BE CONTINUED.

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