re now willing to tell
all they knew, and imagine a great deal more. The amiability of these
Italians, assisted by their sharp and nimble wits, caused them to
overflow with plausible suggestions, and to be very bounteous in their
avowals of interest for the lost Hilda. In a less demonstrative people,
such expressions would have implied an eagerness to search land and sea,
and never rest till she were found. In the mouths that uttered them they
meant good wishes, and were, so far, better than indifference. There
was little doubt that many of them felt a genuine kindness for the shy,
brown-haired, delicate young foreign maiden, who had flown from some
distant land to alight upon their tower, where she consorted only with
the doves. But their energy expended itself in exclamation, and they
were content to leave all more active measures to Kenyon, and to the
Virgin, whose affair it was to see that the faithful votary of her lamp
received no harm.

In a great Parisian domicile, multifarious as its inhabitants might
be, the concierge under the archway would be cognizant of all their
incomings and issuings forth. But except in rare cases, the general
entrance and main staircase of a Roman house are left as free as the
street, of which they form a sort of by-lane. The sculptor, therefore,
could hope to find information about Hilda's movements only from casual
observers.

On probing the knowledge of these people to the bottom, there was
various testimony as to the period when the girl had last been seen.
Some said that it was four days since there had been a trace of her;
but an English lady, in the second piano of the palace, was rather of
opinion that she had met her, the morning before, with a drawing-book
in her hand. Having no acquaintance with the young person, she had taken
little notice and might have been mistaken. A count, on the piano next
above, was very certain that he had lifted his hat to Hilda, under the
archway, two afternoons ago. An old woman, who had formerly tended the
shrine, threw some light upon the matter, by testifying that the lamp
required to be replenished once, at least, in three days, though its
reservoir of oil was exceedingly capacious.

On the whole, though there was other evidence enough to create some
perplexity, Kenyon could not satisfy himself that she had been visible
since the afternoon of the third preceding day, when a fruit seller
remembered her coming out of the arched passage, with