the, nothing daunted, only appealed to Mr. Grey, who had just
caught up with her.

"You agree with me, Mr. Grey; don't you?" she insisted.

"Perfectly, and in every particular. Mrs. Halliday, your daughter and
I have been eavesdropping, and we have come to confess."

Whereupon Blythe dropped upon the foot of her mother's chair, Mr. Grey
established himself in the chair adjoining, and they gave their
somewhat bewildered auditor the benefit of a few facts.

"I really believe," the Englishman remarked, in conclusion,--"I really
believe that haughty old dago can help us if anybody can. And when
your engaging young protegee has completed her conquest,--to-morrow,
it may be, or the day after, for she's making quick work of
it,--we'll see what can be done with him."

And, after all, what could have been more natural than the attraction
which, from that time forth, manifested itself between the Count and
his small countrywoman? If the little girl, in making her very marked
advances, had been governed by the unwavering instinct which always
guided her choice of companions, the old man, for his part, could not
but find refreshment, after his long, solitary voyage, in the pretty
Tuscan prattle of the child. Most Italians love children, and the
Count Giovanni Battista Allamiraviglia appeared to be no exception to
his race.

The two would sit together by the hour, absorbed, neither in the
lovely sights of this wonderful Mediterranean voyage, nor in the
movements of those about them, but simply and solely in one another.

"She's telling her own story better than we could do," Mr. Grey used
to say.

It was now no unusual thing to see the child established on the old
gentleman's knee, and once Blythe found her fast asleep in his arms.
But it was not until the very last day of the voyage that the most
wonderful thing of all occurred.

The sea was smooth as a lake, and all day they had been sailing the
length of the Riviera. All day people had been giving names to the
gleaming white points on the distant, dreamy shore,--Nice, Mentone,
San Remo,--names fragrant with association even to the mind of the
young traveller, who knew them only from books and letters.

Blythe and the little girl were sitting, somewhat apart from the
others, on the long bench by the hatchway where Cecilia had first laid
siege to the Count's affections, and Blythe was allowing the child to
look through the large end of her field-glass,--a source of endl