erent production from the one she had sent
to her father nearly a year earlier. There were tears in the phrases,
there were sobs in the broken sentences. And there were tears in her own
eyes when she sealed it.

She was going to ring for the woman servant to take it, and her hand
was on the bell. She paused, looked at the addressed envelope, glanced
furtively round the room, and then kissed it passionately. Then she
rang.

Griggs came home later than usual, but he thought she was preoccupied
and absent-minded.

"Has anything gone wrong?" he asked anxiously.

"Wrong?" she repeated. "Oh no!" She sighed. "It is the same thing. I am
always anxious about you. You were a little pale before you went out and
you had hardly eaten anything at breakfast."

"There is nothing the matter with me," laughed Griggs. "I am
indestructible. I defy fate."

She started perceptibly, for she was too much of an Italian not to be a
little superstitious.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

STEPHANONE was often seen in the Via della Frezza, for the host of the
little wine shop was one of his good customers. The neighbourhood was
very quiet and respectable, and the existence of the wine shop was a
matter of convenience and almost of necessity to the respectable
citizens who dwelt there. They sent their women servants or came
themselves at regular hours, bringing their own bottles and vessels of
all shapes and of many materials for the daily allowance of wine; they
invariably paid in cash, and they never went away in the summer. The
business was a very good one; for the Romans, though they rarely drink
too much and are on the whole a sober people, consume an amount of
strong wine which would produce a curious effect upon any other race, in
any other climate. Stefanone, though his wife had formerly thought him
extravagant, had ultimately turned out to be a very prudent person, and
in the course of a thirty years' acquaintance with Rome had selected his
customers with care, judgment, and foresight. Whenever he was in Rome
and had time to spare he came to the little shop in the Via della
Frezza. He had stood godfather for one of the host's children, which in
those days constituted a real tie between parents and god-parents.

But he had another reason for his frequent visits since that night on
which he had accompanied Gloria and had shielded her from the rain with
his gigantic brass-tipped umbrella. He took an interest in her, and
would wait a long t