eze faintly lisped in the tree-tops. Even the
sunshine, as if it were not always still, seemed stiller than its wont.

"Oh, what--what--what will he think, what will he say, what will he do,
when I turn round, and he sees who I am?" The question repeated and
repeated itself in Susanna's mind, rhythmically, to the tremulous
beating of her heart, as she heard Anthony's footsteps coming near.

He walked quickly, but a few paces short of where she stood he halted,
and for a breathing-space or two there was silence.

Then at last, in English, in his smoothest, his most detached, his most
languid manner, but with an overtone of exultancy that could not be
subdued, he said--

"These ingenuous attempts at mystification are immensely entertaining;
but are there to be many more of them, before you can permit our little
comedy to reach its happy denouement?"

"Good heavens!" thought Susanna, wildly.

She did n't turn round, but presently her shoulders began to shake.
She could n't help it. The discomfiture was hers; she had been
"awfully dished" indeed. But her shoulders shook and shook with silent
laughter.

In the end, of course, she turned.

In her dark eyes disappointment, satisfaction, amazement, and amusement
shone together.

"How in the world did you find out?" she asked. "How _could_ you have
found out? When did you find out? How long have you known? And if
you knew, why did you pretend not to know?"

But Anthony, at the sight of her face, forgot everything.

"Oh, never mind," he cried, and advanced upon her with swift strides.

By-and-by, "Let me look at your right hand," said Susanna. "I want to
see whether you have the Valdeschi pit."

"The Valdeschi what?" said Anthony.

"The Valdeschi pit," said she.

"What is that?" he asked.

"The Valdeschi pit!" she exclaimed. "Do you mean to say that you, the
head of the family, don't know?"

"What is it?" he asked.

"Every true-born son or daughter of San Guido," she explained, "bears
in the palm of the hand a little pit or dint, which is the survival in
his descendants of the scar made by the thorn in the hand of San Guido
himself. See--I have it."

She held out her hand.

Anthony took it, bent ever it, kissed it, studied it.

"It is a delicious hand--but I see no pit," he said.

"_There_," said she, placing the tip of her finger upon a tiny
concavity in the rose-white flesh.

"That?" laughed Anthony. "That is nothing but a pretty little