isiello's and another by Salieri, and I played a
little eighteenth century music. I was in good voice and my touch on the
piano happy.

'He gave me no word of thanks or praise, but remained perfectly silent.
I wonder why?

'Delfina was in bed by that time. When I went upstairs afterwards to see
her, I found her asleep, but with her eyelashes wet as if with tears.
Poor darling! Dorothy told me that my voice could be heard distinctly up
here, and that Delfina had wakened from her first sleep and begun to
sob, and wanted to come down.

'She is asleep again now, but from time to time her little bosom heaves
with a suppressed sob which sends a vague distress into my own heart,
and a desire to respond to that involuntary sob, to this grief which
sleep cannot assuage. Poor darling!

'Who is playing the piano downstairs, I wonder? With the soft pedal
down, some one is trying over that gavotte of Rameau's, so full of
bewitching melancholy, that I was playing just now. Who can it be?
Francesca came up with me--it is late.

'I went out and leaned over the loggia. The room opening into the
vestibule is dark, but there is light in the room next to it, where
Manuel and the Marchese are still playing cards.

'The gavotte has stopped, some one is going down the steps into the
garden.

'Why should I be so alert, so watchful, so curious? Why should every
sound startle me to-night?

'Delfina has wakened and is calling me.

'_September 17th._--Manuel left this morning. We accompanied him to the
station at Rovigliano. He will return about the 10th of October to fetch
me, and we all go on to Sienna, to my mother. Delfina and I will
probably stay at Sienna till after the New Year. I shall see the Loggia
of the Pope and the Fonte Gaja, and my beautiful black and white
Cathedral once more--that beloved dwelling-place of the Blessed Virgin,
where a part of my soul has ever remained to pray in a spot that my
knees know well.

'I always have a vision of that spot clearly before me, and when I go
back I shall kneel on the exact stone where I always used to. I know it
as well as if my knees had left a deep hollow there. And there too I
shall find that portion of my soul which still lingers there in prayer
beneath the starry blue vault above, which is mirrored in the marble
floor like a midnight sky in a placid lake.

'Assuredly nothing there is changed. In the costly chapel, full of
palpitating shadow and mysterious gloom, alive with