that they both took her for a much younger girl
than she really was. She had lived so entirely under the jurisdiction of
those older than herself that in many ways she had remained a child. And
she had begun by feeling still younger than before, after suddenly
blossoming into independence. It was only since the night of Christmas,
when the frost of unhappiness nipped the newly unfolded petals, that the
flower had begun to droop. Now that dark time was already forgotten. She
could hardly realize that it had ever been. In the joy of Vanno's love
for her, and his old friend's fatherly kindness, she basked in the
contentment of being understood, loved, taken care of; and she knew that
she was a woman, not a child, only by the capacity to love a man as a
woman loves. If she had said, "But I am nearly twenty-five," the two
men would have realized at once that her school days must have ended
long ago, even if prolonged beyond the usual time; and they would have
asked themselves, if they had not asked her, where she had spent the
years between then and now, in order to account for that ignorance of
the world which to them explained and excused everything she had done at
Monte Carlo. But it did not enter Mary's mind to mention her age.

"Upon some natures such teaching might not have made the same
impression, of course," the cure went on, thoughtfully. "This dear
child, it seems to me, has a very--how shall I express it?--a very
old-fashioned nature. Nothing, I believe, could ever have turned her
into one of those hard modern girls they are running up now like
buildings made of concrete on steel frames. But the convent teaching has
accentuated all in her that was already what I call 'old-fashioned.' And
you, too, my Principino, you are old-fashioned!"

"I?" exclaimed Vanno, surprised.

"Yes. You will suit each other well, you two, I prophesy. You have an
old-fashioned nature: but do not think when I say that, I place you on a
shelf at the back of the world's cupboard. All Romans, all Italian men,
are old-fashioned at heart--and it is the heart that counts, though we
do not always know it; and most of us would not like others to know it
of ourselves. You have been much in the East, Principino, and you have
learned to love the desert; but you would not have loved it as you do
were it not for the spirit of romance which keeps you old-fashioned
under a very thin veneer of what is modern. I saw this in you when you
were a boy and m