" Natalie
said, almost calmly. "Do you think it is what my mother would have done,
Madame Potecki? They have told me she was a brave woman."

CHAPTER XXXI.

IN A GARDEN AT POSILIPO.

"--Prends mon coeur, me dit-elle,
Oui, mais a la chapelle,
Sois mon petit....
--Plait-il
Ton petit?
--Sois mon petit mari!"

--It was Calabressa who was gayly humming to himself; and it was well
that he could amuse himself with his _chansons_ and his cigarettes, for
his friend Edwards was proving anything but an attentive companion. The
tall, near-sighted, blond-faced man from the British Museum was far too
much engrossed by the scene around him. They were walking along the
quays at Naples; and it so happened that at this moment all the
picturesque squalor and lazy life of the place were lit up by the glare
reflected from a wild and stormy sunset. The tall, pink-fronted houses;
the mules and oxen with their brazen yokes and tinkling bells; the
fruit-sellers, and fish-sellers, and water-carriers, in costumes of many
hues; the mendicant friars with their cloak and hood of russet-brown;
the priests black and clean-shaven; the groups of women, swarthy of
face, with head-dresses of red or yellow, clustered round the stalls;
the children, in rags of brown, and scarlet, and olive-green, lying
about the pavement as if artists had posed them there--all these formed
a picture which was almost bewildering in its richness of color, and was
no doubt rendered all the more brilliant because of the powerful
contrast with the dark and driven sea. For the waters out there were
racing in before a stiff breeze, and springing high on the fortresses
and rocks; and the clouds overhead were seething and twisting, with many
a sudden flash of orange; and then, far away beyond all this color and
motion and change, rose the vast and gloomy bulk of Vesuvius,
overshadowed and thunderous, as if the mountain were charged with a
coming storm.

Calabressa grew impatient, despite his careless song.

"--Me seras tu fidele....
--Comme une tourterelle.
--Eh bieu, ca va....
Ca va!
--Ca me va!
--Comme ca, ca me va!

--_Diable_, Monsieur Edouarts! You are very silent. You do not know
where we are going, perhaps?"

Edwards started, as if he were waking from a reverie.

"Oh yes, Signor Calabressa," said he, "I am not likely to forget that.
Perhaps I think more seriously about it than y