wed
me home yesterday, but I thought as I was coming to-day...."

"Black has quite deserted me since Mr. Rossi appeared," said Roma, and
then she introduced the deputy to the Princess.

The little lady was effusive. "I was just saying, Honourable Rossi, that
if you would honour my box at the opera to-morrow night...."

David Rossi glanced at Roma.

"Oh yes, Donna Roma is coming, and if you will...."

"With pleasure, Princess."

"That's charming! After the opera we'll have supper at the Grand Hotel.
Good-day!" said the Princess, and then in a low voice at the door, "I
leave you to your delightful duties, my dear. You are not looking so
well, though. Must be the scirocco. My poor dear husband used to suffer
from it shockingly. Adieu!"

Roma was less confused but just as nervous when she settled to her work
afresh.

"I've been thinking all night long of the story you told me yesterday,"
she said. "No, that way, please--eyes as before--thank you! About your
old friend, I mean. He was a good man--I don't doubt that--but he made
everybody suffer. Not only his father and mother, but his wife also. Has
anybody a right to sacrifice his flesh and blood to a work for the
world?"

"When a man has taken up a mission for humanity his kindred must
reconcile themselves to that," said Rossi.

"Yes, but a child, one who cannot be consulted. Your friend's daughter,
for example. She was to lose everything--her father himself at last. How
could he love her? I suppose you would say he did love her."

"Love her? He lived for her. She was everything on earth to him, except
the one thing to which he had dedicated his life."

A half-smile parted her lovely lips.

"When her mother was gone he was like a miser who had been robbed of all
his jewels but one, and the love of father, mother, and wife seemed to
gather itself up in the child."

The lovely lips had a doubtful curve.

"How bright she was, too! I can see her still in the dingy London house
with her violet eyes and coal-black hair and happy ways--a gleam of the
sun from our sunny Italy."

She looked at him. His face was calm and solemn. Did he really know her
after all? She felt her cheeks flush and tingle.

"And yet he left her behind to come to Italy on a hopeless errand," she
said.

"He did."

"How could he know what would happen?"

"He couldn't, and that troubled him most of all. He lived in constant
fear of being taken away from his daughter before her little