red to teach them. Fortunately none of
them understood Italian, and consequently the expostulations of the boy
in charge were disregarded. It is not my intention to dwell upon the
never-to-be-forgotten days--ah, and still more the evenings--we spent
at the baths of Bormio. I had loved her as she crossed the plank; but
daily now had I more cause to love her, and it was at Bormio that she
learned--I say it with all humility--to love me. The seat in the garden
on which I proposed is doubtless still to be seen, with the chair near
it on which her papa was at that very moment sitting, with one of his
feet on a small table. During the three sunny days that followed, my
life was one delicious dream, with no sign that the awakening was at
hand.

"So far I had not mentioned the incident at Franzenshohe to her. Perhaps
you will call my reticence contemptible; but the fact is, I feared to
fall in her esteem. I could not have spoken of the plank without
admitting that I was afraid to cross it; and then what would she, who
was a heroine, think of a man who was so little of a hero? Thus, though
I had told her many times that I fell in love with her at first sight,
she thought I referred to the time when she first saw me. She liked to
hear me say that I believed in no love but love at first sight; and,
looking back, I can recall saying it at least once on every seat in the
garden at the baths of Bormio.

"Do you know Tirano, a hamlet in a nest of vines, where Italian soldiers
strut and women sleep in the sun beside baskets of fruit? How happily we
entered it; were we the same persons who left it within an hour? I was
now travelling with her party; and at Tirano, while the others rested,
she and I walked down a road between vines and Indian corn. Why I should
then have told her that I loved her for a whole day before she saw me
I cannot tell. It may have been something she said, perhaps only an
irresistible movement of her head; for her grace was ever taking me by
surprise, and she was a revelation a thousand times a day. But whatever
it was that made me speak out, I suddenly told her that I fell in love
with her as she stood upon the plank at Franzenshohe. I remember her
stopping short at a point where there had probably once been a gate to
the vineyard, and I thought she was angry with me for not having told
her of the Franzenshohe incident before. Soon the pallor of her face
alarmed me. She entreated me to say it was not at Franzen