June. And the
nightingales of Sampaolo sing all day, as well as all night. _Tiu,
tiu, tiu--will, will, will--weep, weep, weep_--I can hear them now.
But I must stop, or I shall go on for ever. Believe me, the beauties
of Sampaolo are very great."

It was a long speech, but it had had an attentive listener. It was a
long speech, but it had been diversified by the varying modulations of
Susanna's voice, the varying expressions of her face, by little pauses,
hesitations, changes of time and of rhythm, by occasional little
gestures.

It had had an attentive, even an absorbed listener: one who, already
interested in the speaker, happened to have a quite peculiar interest
in her theme. As she spoke, I think Anthony beheld his own air-vision
of Sampaolo; I fancy the familiar park of Craford, the smooth,
well-groomed, well-fed English landscape, melted away; I doubt if he
saw anything of the actual save the white form, the strenuous face, the
shining eyes, of his informant.

But now, her voice ceasing, suddenly the actual came back--the brown
brook swirling at their feet, the tall pines whispering above, the warm
pine-incense, the tesserae of sun and shadow dancing together on the
carpet of pine-needles, as the tassels overhead swung in the moving air.

"You paint Elysium," he said. "You paint a veritable Island of the
Blessed."

Susanna's eyes clouded.

"Once upon a time Sampaolo _was_ a veritable Island of the Blessed,"
she answered sadly. "But now no more. Since its union with what they
call the Kingdom of Italy, Sampaolo has been, rather, an Island of the
Distressed."

"Ah--?" said Anthony, again on a tone, with a mien, that pressed her to
continue.

But all at once, as if recalled from an abstraction, Susanna gave a
little laugh,--what seemed a slightly annoyed, half-apologetic little
laugh,--and lifted her hands in a gesture of deprecation, of
self-reprehension.

"I beg your pardon," she said. "I can't think how I have allowed
myself to become so tiresome. One prates of one's parish pump."

"_Tiresome_?" cried out Anthony, in spontaneous protest. "I can't tell
you how much you interest me."

"He is the poorest of poor dissemblers," thought Susanna.

"You are extremely civil," she said. "But how can the condition of our
parish pump possibly interest a stranger?"

"H'm," thought Anthony, taken aback, "I expect my interest _does_ seem
somewhat improbable."

So, speciously, he sought to justif