ght
pitiful, in her manner toward him. His pride winced under it.

* * * * *

Sir James, too, must have his private talk with Diana--when he took her
to the farther extremity of the little terrace, and told her of the
results and echoes which had followed the publication, in the _Times_,
of Wing's dying statement.

Diana had given her sanction to the publication with trembling and a
torn mind. Justice to her mother required it. There she had no doubt;
and her will, therefore, hardened to the act, and to the publicity which
it involved. But Sir Francis Wing's son was still living, and what for
her was piety must be for him stain and dishonor. She did not shrink;
but the compunctions she could not show she felt; and, through Sir James
Chide, she had written a little letter which had done something to
soften the blow, as it affected a dull yet not inequitable mind.

"Does he forgive us?" she asked, in a low voice, turning her face toward
the Umbrian plain, with its twinkling lights below, its stars above.

"He knows he must have done the same in our place," said Sir James.

After a minute he looked at her closely under the electric light which
dominated the terrace.

"I am afraid you have been going through a great deal," he said, bending
over her. "Put it from you when you can. You don't know how people
feel for you"

She looked up with her quick smile.

"I don't always think of it--and oh! I am so thankful to _know_! I dream
of them often--my father and mother--but not unhappily. They are
_mine_--much, much more than they ever were."

She clasped her hands, and he felt rather than saw the exaltation, the
tender fire in her look.

All very well! But this stage would pass--must pass. She had her own
life to live. And if one man had behaved like a selfish coward, all the
more reason to invoke, to hurry on the worthy and the perfect lover.

* * * * *

Presently Marion Vincent appeared, and with her Frobisher, and an
unknown man with a magnificent brow, dark eyes of a remarkable vivacity,
and a Southern eloquence both of speech and gesture. He proved to be a
famous Italian, a poet well known to European fame, who, having married
an English wife, had settled himself at Assisi for the study of St.
Francis and the Franciscan literature. He became at once the centre of a
circle which grouped itself on the terrace, while he pointed to spot
after spot, di