, Signora," crossing herself and
looking sharply at me, "perhaps the gold table is the shrine of her
religion: does the Signora know?"

I could not help laughing. "Oh no, Anita," I said; "we do not have shrines
in our religion."

Anita's face clouded. "Iddio mio!" she said, "but the Virgin will keep the
dearest Signora Maynardi. Biagio and I have vowed to keep a candle always
burning for her in Ara Coeli! The dearest, most beautiful of Signoras;"
and Anita walked disconsolately on, down the stairs.

I found Dora kneeling before the "gold table," arranging great masses of
maiden-hair fern around the wood carving and in the shelf below. As I saw
the rapt and ecstatic expression of her face, I understood why Anita had
believed the gold table to be a shrine.

"They do not suit it like the anemones," said she, sadly; "and I can have
no more anemones this year."

"So poor Anita told me just now on the stairs," replied I. "She was almost
crying, she was so sorry she could not get them for you. But I am sure,
dear, the ferns are beautiful on it. I think the pale green looks even
better than the purple with the gold and the pale yellow wood."

"I like the purple best," said Dora; "besides, we always had purple at
home," and her eyes filled with tears. Then, turning suddenly to me, she
said, "Why have you never asked me what this is? I know you must have
wondered: it looks so strange--this poor little clumsy bit of American
pine, on my gilt table shrined with flowers!"

"Yes, I have wondered, I acknowledge, for I could not make out the
design," I replied; "but I thought it might have some story connected with
it, which you would tell me if you wished I should know. I did not think
it clumsy; I think it is fantastic, and has a certain sort of weird
life-likeness about it."

"Do you really think it has any life-like look about it?" and Dora's face
flushed with pleasure. "I think so, but I supposed nobody else could see
anything in it. No one of my acquaintance has ever alluded to it,"
continued she, half laughing, half crying, "but I see them trying to
scrutinize it slyly when they are not observed. As for poor old Anita, I
believe she thinks it is our Fetish. She walks round it on tiptoe with her
hands clasped on her apron."

"But now," she continued, "I will show you the same design in something
else;" and she led the way through her own bedroom to Robert's, which was
beyond. On the threshold she paused, and kissing me,