roast-chicken,-yes?-
A-salad,-yes?"

Daphne looked dubiously at him, though he had stated the case with
entire accuracy, and had suggested for her solitary meal what she most
liked. There was a slight pucker in her white forehead, and she
vouchsafed no answer to what she did not understand.

"Addio, addio," she said earnestly.

"A rivederla!" answered Giacomo, with a courtly sweep of the chamois
skin.

The girl climbed steadily up the moist, steep path leading to the deep
shadow of a group of ilex trees on the hill. At her side a stream of
water trickled past drooping maidenhair fern and over immemorial moss.
Here and there it fell in little cascades, making a sleepy murmur in
the warm air of afternoon.

Halfway up the hill Daphne paused and looked back. Below the yellow
walls of the Villa Accolanti, standing in a wide garden with
encompassing poplars and cypresses, sketched great grassy slopes and
gray-green olive orchards. The water from the stream, gathered in a
stone basin at the foot of the hill, flowed in a marble conduit through
the open hall. As she looked she was aware of two old brown faces
anxiously gazing after her. Giacomo and Assunta were chattering
eagerly in the doorway, the black of his butler's dress and the white
of his protecting apron making his wife's purple calico skirt and red
shoulder shawl look more gay. They caught the last flutter of the
girl's blue linen gown as it disappeared among the ilexes.

"E molto bello, very beautiful, the Signorina," remarked Assunta. "What
gray eyes she has, and how she walks!"

"But she knows no speech," responded her husband.

"Ma che!" shouted Assunta scornfully, "she talks American. You
couldn't expect them to speak like us over there. They are not Romans
in America."

"My brother Giovanni is there," remarked Giacomo. "She could have
learned of him."

"She is like the Contessa," said Assunta. "You would know they are
sisters, only this one is younger and has something more sweet."

"This one is grave," objected Giacomo as he polished. "She does not
smile so much. The Contessa is gay. She laughs and sings and her
cheeks grow red when she drinks red wine, and her hair is more yellow."

"She makes it so!" snapped Assunta.

"I have heard they all do in Rome," said Giacomo. "Some day I would
like to go to see."

"To go away, to leave this girl here alone with us when she had just
arrived!" interrupted Assunta. "I have no patience with