e won't have the pleasure of seeing me, then. I'm going the last
of May."

"I thought you were going to stay a month!" she protested.

"That will be a month; and more, too."

"So it will," she owned.

"I'm glad it doesn't seem any longer-say a year--Miss Clementina!"

"Oh, not at all," she returned. "Miss Milray's brother and his wife are
coming with her. They've been in Egypt."

"I never saw them," said Hinkle. He paused, before he added, "Well, it
would seem rather crowded after they get here, I suppose," and he
laughed, while Clementina said nothing.

XXX.

Hinkle came every morning now, to smoothe out the doubts and difficulties
that had accumulated in Mrs. Lander's mind over night, and incidentally
to propose some pleasure for Clementina, who could feel that he was
pitying her in her slavery to the sick woman's whims, and yet somehow
entreating her to bear them. He saw them together in what Mrs. Lander
called her well days; but there were other days when he saw Clementina
alone, and then she brought him word from Mrs. Lander, and reported his
talk to her after he went away. On one of these she sent him a
cheerfuller message than usual, and charged the girl to explain that she
was ever so much better, but had not got up because she felt that every
minute in bed was doing her good. Clementina carried back his regrets and
congratulation, and then told Mrs. Lander that he had asked her to go out
with him to see a church, which he was sorry Mrs. Lander could not see
too. He professed to be very particular about his churches, for he said
he had noticed that they neither of them had any great gift for sights,
and he had it on his conscience to get the best for them. He told
Clementina that the church he had for them now could not be better if it
had been built expressly for them, instead of having been used as a place
of worship for eight or ten generations of Venetians before they came.
She gave his invitation to Mrs. Lander, who could not always be trusted
with his jokes, and she received it in the best part.

"Well, you go!" she said. "Maddalena can look after me, I guess. He's the
only one of the fellas, except that lo'd, that I'd give a cent for." She
added, with a sudden lapse from her pleasure in Hinkle to her severity
with Clementina, "But you want to be ca'eful what you' doin'."

"Ca'eful?"

"Yes!--About Mr. Hinkle. I a'n't agoin' to have you lead him on, and then
say you didn't know where he w