our friend, and that I'm awful sorry."

"I've got his picture here in my locket," said Miss Conway, after
wiping her eyes with her handkerchief. "I never showed it to
anybody; but I will to you, Mr. Donovan, because I believe you to be
a true friend."

Mr. Donovan gazed long and with much interest at the photograph
in the locket that Miss Conway opened for him. The face of Count
Mazzini was one to command interest. It was a smooth, intelligent,
bright, almost a handsome face--the face of a strong, cheerful man
who might well be a leader among his fellows.

"I have a larger one, framed, in my room," said Miss Conway. "When
we return I will show you that. They are all I have to remind me of
Fernando. But he ever will be present in my heart, that's a sure
thing."

A subtle task confronted Mr. Donovan,--that of supplanting the
unfortunate Count in the heart of Miss Conway. This his admiration
for her determined him to do. But the magnitude of the undertaking
did not seem to weigh upon his spirits. The sympathetic but cheerful
friend was the role he essayed; and he played it so successfully
that the next half-hour found them conversing pensively across two
plates of ice-cream, though yet there was no diminution of the
sadness in Miss Conway's large gray eyes.

Before they parted in the hall that evening she ran upstairs and
brought down the framed photograph wrapped lovingly in a white silk
scarf. Mr. Donovan surveyed it with inscrutable eyes.

"He gave me this the night he left for Italy," said Miss Conway. "I
had the one for the locket made from this."

"A fine-looking man," said Mr. Donovan, heartily. "How would it suit
you, Miss Conway, to give me the pleasure of your company to Coney
next Sunday afternoon?"

A month later they announced their engagement to Mrs. Scott and the
other boarders. Miss Conway continued to wear black.

A week after the announcement the two sat on the same bench in the
downtown park, while the fluttering leaves of the trees made a dim
kinetoscopic picture of them in the moonlight. But Donovan had worn
a look of abstracted gloom all day. He was so silent to-night that
love's lips could not keep back any longer the questions that love's
heart propounded.

"What's the matter, Andy, you are so solemn and grouchy to-night?"

"Nothing, Maggie."

"I know better. Can't I tell? You never acted this way before. What
is it?"

"It's nothing much, Maggie."

"Yes it is; and I want to know.