te, and reply: "A little statue? I rent
the apartment, furnished, of Monsignor N----. The count may know."

Clearly, San Donato deserved a place of honor, and the salon alone was
sufficiently good for him. Cecilia traversed the room slowly, seeking
a shrine. The place was dark and silent; draperies of sombre damask
shrouded the windows and doorways; chandeliers of Venetian glass
swayed down from the vaulted ceiling like garlands of pale, frozen
flowers; the floor was of polished, inlaid woods; the bronze and green
tints of the wall were relieved by gilded cornices and columns bearing
the shield of the count's ancestors. All was stately, impressive, if a
trifle tarnished; and the effect of patrician elegance, everywhere
apparent, was heightened by an occasional portrait--a Martellini in
cavalier hat, with an angel bearing heavenward the family emblem, a
hammer; a Martellini as a nun, with long, pale fingers clasped over a
rosary.

Cecilia had not completed her survey when she was startled by the
tinkle of a bell and the approach of visitors. One glance assured her
that egress by means of the door was cut off. She darted behind a sofa
in the corner beside the window. Here she crouched on the floor,
holding San Donato in her arms, and laughed silently. She did not fear
to confront these guests. Who then? She dreaded the flash of her own
mother's eye. Yes, indeed, her pretty mamma had ceased to love her,
banished her more and more from her presence, made sharp or dry
responses to her prattle. Cecilia sighed inaudibly as she crouched
there. Hark! The visitors approached the window; she could touch one
by extending her arm from her hiding-place. Who were they? Oh, some of
her mamma's gentlemen friends lounging in for an afternoon call. They
spoke in a low, rapid tone, and their conversation only reached her
because of her propinquity.

Birds of prey sometimes pass over the blooming valleys, the waving
grain sown with wild flowers, the dove-cote beneath the cottage eaves,
uttering their harsh, discordant cries while on the wing.

The English voice, hoarse and deep: "It promises to be a slow
season--awfully dull. No English coming out this year, I hear. Have
you recently made the acquaintance of--la belle Americaine?"

The French voice, clear and crisp in utterance: "Yes, last week, at
the Spanish Embassy. She is really chic, mon ami."

The English voice: "Her dinners are not at all bad. Lots of money, you
know, and the