imagined that she had aroused
suspicions, but, quickly, she saw plainly that he was but lightly
jesting. "Have a care, my Anna! Have a care!"

Suddenly her heart was filled with resolution. When would there be a
better time than now in which to tell him her sweet secret? It could
not be that he would be so very angry. His love for her, his longing
that she might be happy, were, she knew, too great for that. And,
later, when he knew Jack Vanderlyn as well as she had come to know
him, he would realize, as she did, that nowhere in the world, not in
the castles of the barons on the Rhine, not in the palaces of kings,
could he or anyone find more genuine gentility than in this free-born
unpretending young American.

"Father!" she said timidly.

"My girl," said he, without the least suspicion that her heart could,
really, be touched by anyone in this cold land of crude democracy,
"you must always come and tell me if your heart begins to flutter like
a little bird. You--"

"Of--course, my father."

The matter had not in the least impressed him. As she turned and
re-turned something in her hand beneath the table, and tried to rouse
her courage to the point of making full confession, the old man
quietly dismissed the subject.

"Now, a health to you, my Anna," he said gaily and raised high his
glassful of cheap wine. "May the good God give you all the happiness
your father wishes for you! More than that I cannot say, for I wish
you all the happiness in all the world. Ah, when I look at you I am so
full of joy! It is as if sweet birds were singing in my heart.
Wait--you shall hear!"

Forgetting the great feast, as, seized by the impulse to express
himself in the completest way he knew he turned from her with a bright
smile, he crossed the tiny room and took down from the mantlepiece his
flute.

"Ah, play for me!" she cried, delighted, both at the prospect of the
music, which she loved with a real passion, and at the prospect of the
brief reprieve the diversion would afford her from the revelation
which she had to make.

[Illustration: It was as if the "sweet birds singing in his heart" had
risen and were perched, all twittering and cooing, chirping, carolling
upon his lips]

He pretended shy reluctance. "No; in your heart you do not really wish
to hear. You have grown tired of the old flute, long ago."

She laughed and rose and went to him. "Bad boy! He must be teased! I
am _not_ tired of it. To me it is in all th