ple shadows about her dark
eyes, while she--and Mae looked in her glass again. What did she see?
Certainly a different picture, but a picture for all that. Life and
color and youth, a-tremble and a-quiver in every quick movement of her
face, in the sudden lifting of the eyelids, the swift turn of the lips,
the litheness and carelessness of every motion; above and beyond all,
the picture possessed that rare quality which some artist has declared
to be the highest beauty, that picturesque charm which shines from
within, that magnetic flash and quiver which comes and goes "ere one can
say it lightens."

The veiled lady's face was stranger, more mysterious, to an artistic or
an imaginative mind; but youth, and intense life, and endless variety
usually carry the day with a man's captious heart, and so Bero called
Mae

"My little Queen of the Carnival."

CHAPTER VIII.

Mae's good times were greatly dimmed after this by the thought that she
was watched. The bouquets which came daily from Bero troubled her also
not a little. They were invariably formed of the same flowers, and might
easily attract Edith's attention and possible suspicion. So she
stayed home from the Corso one day not long after, when she was in
a particularly Corso-Carnival mood. She wandered helplessly about,
restless and full of desire to be down at the balcony with the rest. And
such a strange thing is the human heart, that it was Norman Mann's face
she saw before her constantly, and she found Miss Rae's little twinkling
sort of eyes far more haunting than those of her veiled friend.

The rich life in Mae's blood was surging in her veins and must be let
off in some way. If she had had her music and a piano she might have
thrown her soul into some great flood-waves of harmony. The Farnesina
frescoes of Cupid and Psyche over across the Tiber would have helped
her, but here she was alone, and so she did what so many "fervent souls"
do--scribbled her heart out in a colorful, barbarous rhyme. Mae had
ordinarily too good sense for this, too deep a reverence for that world
of poetry, at the threshold of which one should bow the knee, and loose
the shoe from his foot, and tread softly. She didn't care for this
to-day. She plunged boldly in, wrote her verse, copied it, sent it to
a Roman English paper, and heard from it again two days later, in the
following way.

The entire party were breakfasting together, when Albert suddenly looked
up from his