is bride welcome, and Cora's
brogue and her sympathy caused his grief to freshen. But their
boisterous happiness and their own content was stronger than all else,
and when at last Cora said, "Och, show us the statywary 't you're
makin', Misther Fairfax, dear," he languidly rose and uncovered again
his bas-relief. Then he watched curiously the Irish girl and the Italian
workman before his labour.

"Shure," Cora murmured, her eyes full of tears, "it's Molly herself, Mr.
Fairfax, dear. It's _living_."

He let the covering fall, and its folds suggested the garments of the
tomb.

The young couple, starting out in life arm-in-arm, had seen only life
in his production, and he was glad. He let them go without reluctance,
eager to return to his modelling, and to retouch a line in the woman's
figure, for the bas-relief was still warm clay, and had not been cast in
plaster, and he kept at his work until five o'clock in the afternoon,
when there was another knock at his door. He bade the intruder absently
"Come in," heard the door softly open and close, and the sound jarred
his nerves, as did every sound at that door, and with his scalpel in his
hand, turned sharply. In the door close to his shadow stood the figure
of a slender young girl. There was only the space of the room between
them, and even in his surprise he thought, "_Now_, there is nothing
else!"

"Cousin Antony," she said from the doorway where he had seen the vision,
"aren't you going to speak to me? Aren't you glad to see me?"

Her words were the first Fairfax had heard in the rich voice of a woman,
for the child tone had changed, and there was a "timbre" now in the tone
that struck the old and a new thrill. Her boldness, the bright assurance
seemed gone. He thought her voice trembled.

"Why don't you speak to me, Cousin Antony? Do you think I'm a _ghost_?"

(A ghost!)

Bella came forward as she spoke, and he saw that she wore a girlish
dress, a long dress, a womanly dress. With her old affectionate gesture
she held out her hand, and on her dark hair was a little red bonnet of
some fashion too modish for him to find familiar, but very bewitching
and becoming, and he saw that she was a lovely woman, nearly seventeen.

"I lost the precious little paper you gave me, Cousin Antony, that day
at church, and I only found it to-day in packing. I'm going home for the
Easter holidays."

He realized that she was close to him, and that she innocently lifted up
her fa