a coin on the table.

Dechartre was near her. Gravely, almost severely, he said to her:

"You know..."

She looked at him and waited.

He finished his phrase:

"... that I love you?"

She continued to fix on him, silently, the gaze of her clear eyes, the
lids of which were trembling. Then she made a motion with her head that
meant Yes. And, without his trying to stop her, she rejoined Miss Bell
and Madame Marmet, who were waiting for her at the corner.

CHAPTER XV. THE MYSTERIOUS LETTER

Therese, after quitting Dechartre, took breakfast with her friend
and Madame Marmet at the house of an old Florentine lady whom Victor
Emmanuel had loved when he was Duke of Savoy. For thirty years she had
not once gone out of her palace on the Arno, where, she painted, and
wearing a wig, she played the guitar in her spacious white salon. She
received the best society of Florence, and Miss Bell often called on
her. At table this recluse, eighty-seven years of age, questioned the
Countess Martin on the fashionable world of Paris, whose movement was
familiar to her through the journals. Solitary, she retained respect and
a sort of devotion for the world of pleasure.

As they came out of the palazzo, in order to avoid the wind which was
blowing on the river, Miss Bell led her friends into the old streets
with black stone houses and a view of the distant horizon, where, in
the pure air, stands a hill with three slender trees. They walked; and
Vivian showed to her friend, on facades where red rags were hanging,
some marble masterpiece--a Virgin, a lily, a St. Catherine. They
walked through these alleys of the antique city to the church of Or
San Michele, where it had been agreed that Dechartre should meet them.
Therese was thinking of him now with deepest interest. Madame Marmet
was thinking of buying a veil; she hoped to find one on the Corso. This
affair recalled to her M. Lagrange, who, at his regular lecture one day,
took from his pocket a veil with gold dots and wiped his forehead with
it, thinking it was his handkerchief. The audience was astonished, and
whispered to one another. It was a veil that had been confided to him
the day before by his niece, Mademoiselle Jeanne Michot, whom he had
accompanied to the theatre, and Madame Marmet explained how, finding
it in the pocket of his overcoat, he had taken it to return it to his
niece.

At Lagrange's name, Therese recalled the flaming comet announced by the
savant, and