e you finally got home I'd made up my mind not
to be an idiot and make myself a nuisance trying to influence you. It's
your funeral. What you choose to do is none of my business. What I said
when you came in just escaped me.--Stand off and let me look at you."

While making the request, she herself drew off to get a more
comprehensive view of her friend.

Something of the sunshine, the mountain sweetness, the unpolluted
breezes and wide perspectives of the heights, the dreams of the starlit
homeward ride, the triumph in man's love, was shining forth from Aurora,
with her fresh sunburn, her untidied hair, and softly luminous eyes.
Estelle felt herself suddenly on the point of tears. But she stiffened.

"Well, you do look as if you'd had a good time, you crazy thing!" she
said dryly. "What made you put your best dress on if you were going to
sit round on the ground? You've got it all grass stains. Oh, Nell," she
melted, "while you've been off gallivanting, I've just about worried
myself sick over a paper Leslie left. I've been longing for you to get
back to see what you make of it."

"A paper? What do you mean?"

"A newspaper. Come on upstairs. I left it on the desk. Leslie called in
the forenoon, but I had gone out. Then she came again in the afternoon,
so I knew it must be something special. But I simply couldn't bring
myself to see her and let her know you'd gone off for the whole day with
Gerald Fane. So I got the maid to tell her we were both out. Everybody
does that over here. Anyhow, I went and stood on the terrace while the
maid was delivering my message. So Leslie went off, but she left this
Italian paper for the maid to give us. And, my dear,--now don't
faint,--there's a long piece in it about you."

"For goodness' sakes! About me? Why? Where?"

"There. It isn't marked, and I was the longest time trying to discover
why Leslie had left the paper. After I'd gone all over it hunting for a
marked passage, I thought it must be a mistake and that she'd simply
left it because she was tired of carrying it round, and the maid hadn't
understood. But going over it column by column, I at last saw the word
Hawthorne and those other names. '_Una Americana_'--'An
American'--the article is entitled. It looks to me, Nell, as if your
whole life's history might be printed there."

"For the land's sake! Now, who do you suppose can have done that? What
on earth would anybody want to--"

"I've been puzzling over it and puzz