her guest, and I
supposed--"

"Oh, don't say a wo'd!" cried Clementina, but now that he had begun he
was powerless to stop.

"I would not ask, but my landlady has pressed me for her rent--I suppose
she needs it--and I have been reduced to the last copper--"

The girl whose eyes the tears of self pity so rarely visited, broke into
a sob that seemed to surprise her visitor. But she checked herself as
with a quick inspiration: "Have you been to breakfast?"

"Well--ah--not this morning," Mr. Orson admitted, as if to imply that
having breakfasted some other morning might be supposed to serve the
purpose.

She left him and ran to the door. "Maddalena, Maddalena!" she called;
and Maddalena responded with a frightened voice from the direction of
the kitchen:

"Vengo subito!"

She hurried out with the coffee-pot in her hand, as if she had just
taken it up when Clementina called; and she halted for the whispered
colloquy between them which took place before she set it down on the
table already laid for breakfast; then she hurried out of the room
again. She came back with a cantaloupe and grapes, and cold ham, and put
them before Clementina and her guest, who both ignored the hunger with
which he swept everything before him. When his famine had left nothing,
he said, in decorous compliment:

"That is very good coffee, I should think the genuine berry, though I am
told that they adulterate coffee a great deal in Europe."

"Do they?" asked Clementina. "I didn't know it."

She left him still sitting before the table, and came back with some
bank-notes in her hand. "Are you sure you hadn't betta take moa?" she
asked.

"I think that five dollars will be all that I shall require," he
answered, with dignity. "I should be unwilling to accept more. I shall
undoubtedly receive some remittances soon."

"Oh, I know you will," Clementina returned, and she added, "I am waiting
for lettas myself; I don't think any one ought to give up."

The preacher ignored the appeal which was in her tone rather than her
words, and went on to explain at length the circumstances of his having
come to Europe so unprovided against chances. When he wished to excuse
his imprudence, she cried out, "Oh, don't say a wo'd! It's just like my
own fatha," and she told him some things of her home which apparently
did not interest him very much. He had a kind of dull, cold
self-absorption in which he was indeed so little like her father
that only her kindn