ur Pollys should find it in her heart to make my boy happy?"

"What's that?" the Colonel cried. "You don't mean?--Bless my soul, I
never thought of such a thing!"

"It seems the most natural thing in the world to me," she said. "And
yet,--supposing your Polly should fail us! I can't expect Geof to be as
irresistible to other people as he is to me." She smiled, as if she were
half in jest, yet there was real anxiety in her tone as she asked: "What
do you think about it, Colonel Steele?"

"Why; I'm sure I don't know. It's something of a shock,--that sort of
thing always is, you know. Young people do go into it so easily. Of
course Geof's a fine fellow. You mean the little one?"

"Of course," said Mrs. Daymond; for though Pauline was far from little,
she had not the height of her tall young sister.

"Of course, of course. Well, well! And you want to know what I think
about it? I think she would be a lucky girl. That would make her your
daughter, wouldn't it? Why, of course she'll say yes! Any girl would be
a fool who didn't, and Polly's no fool. I only wish you had another son
for the other one!"

"I'm afraid she won't take Geof for my sake," Mrs. Daymond said,
smiling, half sadly.

"Oh, yes, she will; I'm sure she will!" cried the Colonel. "But what I
don't understand is--Geof. To be taken with a child like Polly, when,--"
He turned sharp about, and looked into her face, and there was no
mistaking his meaning. It was almost as if he had spoken the words she
had so often heard from his lips.

A great tenderness and compunction swept over the Signora, and found
expression in her face. Her beautiful grey eyes met the impassioned
trouble of her old friend's gaze, with a gentle directness that in
itself went far toward disarming and tranquillising him.

"I sometimes think," she said, "that perhaps this is what all
our--trouble has meant, yours and mine."

There was something indescribably consoling in the community of sorrow
the words seemed to imply. He had never thought before, that his
life-long chagrin had awakened anything more than a momentary regret in
her mind, that it had been a sorrow to her as well.

They were rowing past the cypresses of San Michele, and the Colonel
lifted his hat and placed it on his knees, looking straight before him,
with the slightest possible working of the muscles of his face. The
voice he was listening to was sweet and low, the tender cadence of it
seemed to inform the words she