he little curato very
earnestly; "Are not you ever in God's keeping, without Whose will not
one hair of your head can fall; and is one poor mortal with an image in
his hand, to prevail against the Lord? Besides, you might have seen
that he was fond of you; else why should he want to marry you?"

She said nothing.

"And wherefore did you refuse him? he was an honest man they say; and a
comely; and he would have kept you and your mother far better than you
ever can yourself, for all your spinning and silk winding."

"We are so poor!" she said passionately; "and mother has been ill so
long, we should have become a burthen to him;--and then I never should
have done for a Signora. When his friends came to see him, he would
only have been ashamed of me."

"How can you say so? I tell you the man was good and kind;--he would
even have been willing to settle in Sorrento. It will not be so easy to
find another, sent straight from Heaven to be the saving of you, as
this man, indeed, appeared to be."

"I want no husband;--I never shall;" she said, very stubbornly, half to
herself.

"Is this a vow? or do you mean to be a nun?"

She shook her head.

"The people are not so wrong, who call you wilful, although the name
they give you is not kind. Have you ever considered that you stand
alone in the world, and that your perverseness must make your sick
mother's illness worse to bear, her life more bitter? And what sound
reason can you have to give, for rejecting an honest hand, stretched
out to help you and your mother? Answer me, Laurella."

"I have a reason;" she said, reluctantly, and speaking low; "but it is
one I cannot give."

"Not give! not give to me? not to your confessor, whom you surely know
to be your friend,--or is he not?"

Laurella nodded.

"Then, child, unburthen your heart. If your reason be a good one, I
shall be the very first to uphold you in it. Only you are young, and
know so little of the world. A time may come, when you may find cause
to regret a chance of happiness, thrown away for some foolish fancy
now."

Shyly she threw a furtive glance over to the other end of the boat,
where the young boatman sat, rowing fast. His woollen cap was pulled
deep down over his eyes; he was gazing far across the water, with
averted head, sunk, as it appeared, in his own meditations.

The priest observed her look, and bent his ear down closer.

"You did not know my father?"--she whispered, while a dark look
gat