be told to madama." A frown came on the doctor's face. He was
evidently a true Britisher, decisive in his opinions, and frank enough
to declare them openly. "Yes," he said, curtly, "Madama, as you call
her, should have been here."

"The little angel did not once ask for her," murmured Assunta.

"True!" he answered. And again there was silence. We stood round the
small bed, looking at the empty casket that had held the lost
jewel--the flawless pearl of innocent childhood that had gone,
according to a graceful superstition, to ornament the festal robes of
the Madonna as she walked in all her majesty through heaven. A profound
grief was at my heart--mingled with a sense of mysterious and awful
satisfaction. I felt, not as though I had lost my child, but had rather
gained her to be more entirely mine than ever. She seemed nearer to me
dead than she had been when living. Who could say what her future might
have been? She would have grown to womanhood--what then? What is the
usual fate that falls to even the best woman? Sorrow, pain, and petty
worry, unsatisfied longings, incompleted aims, the disappointment of an
imperfect and fettered life--for say what you will to the contrary,
woman's inferiority to man, her physical weakness, her inability to
accomplish any great thing for the welfare of the world in which she
lives, will always make her more or less an object of pity. If good,
she needs all the tenderness, support, and chivalrous guidance of her
master, man--if bad, she merits what she receives, his pitiless disdain
and measureless contempt. From all dangers and griefs of the kind my
Stella had escaped--for her, sorrow no longer existed. I was glad of
it, I thought, as I watched Assunta shutting the blinds close, as a
signal to outsiders that death was in the house. At a sign from the
doctor I followed him out of the room--on the stairs he turned round
abruptly, and asked:

"Will YOU tell the countess?"

"I would rather be excused," I replied, decisively. "I am not at all in
the humor for a SCENE."

"You think she will make a scene?" he said with an astonished uplifting
of his eyebrows. "I dare say you are right though! She is an excellent
actress."

By this time we had reached the foot of the stairs.

"She is very beautiful," I answered evasively.

"Oh, very! No doubt of that!" And here a strange frown contracted the
doctor's brow. "For my own taste, I prefer an ugly woman to SUCH
beauty."

And with these