which the triumphant Giuditta was
awaiting them, and pointed toward the rosy east which was flushing the
beautiful bay a deep crimson.

"Signorina," he said in his careful French, made more careful by his
effort to control his voice,--"Signorina, it is to you that I owe a
new dawn,--to you and to your honoured mother."

Then, as Mr. DeWitt and Mr. Grey approached, to tell them that
everything was in readiness for them to land, Blythe turned, with the
light of the sunrise in her face, and said, under her breath, so that
only her mother could hear:

"O Mumsey! How beautiful the world is, with you and me right in the
very middle of it!"

ARTFUL MADGE

CHAPTER I

THE PRIZE CONTEST

"Artful Madge" was the very flippant name by which Madge Burtwell's
brother Ned had persisted in calling her from the time when, at the
age of sixteen, she gained reluctant permission to become a student at
the Art School.

"Not that we have any objection to art," Mrs. Burtwell was wont to
explain in a deprecatory tone; "only we should have preferred to have
Madge graduate first, before devoting herself to a mere
accomplishment. It seems a little like putting the trimming on a dress
before sewing the seams up," she would add; "I did it once when I was
a girl, and the dress always had a queer look."

But Mrs. Burtwell, though firm in her own opinions, was something of
a philosopher in her attitude toward the contrary-minded, and even
where her own children were concerned she never allowed her influence
to degenerate into tyranny. When she found Madge, at the age of
sixteen, more eager than ever before to study art, and nothing else,
she told her husband that they might as well make up their minds to
it, and, at the word, their minds were made up. For Mr. Burtwell was
the one entirely and unreasoningly tractable member of Mrs. Burtwell's
flock; in explanation of which fact he was careful to point out that
only a mature mind could appreciate the true worth of Mrs. Burtwell's
judgment.

The Burtwells were people of small means and of correspondingly modest
requirements. They lived in an unfashionable quarter of the city, kept
a maid-of-all-work, sent their children to the public schools, and got
their books from the Public Library. Having no expensive tastes, they
regarded themselves as well-to-do and envied no one.

If Madge Burtwell's eyes had been a whit less clear, or her nature a
thought less guileless, Ned would not hav