to a flood of weeping.

"Oh! my poor, innocent baby! to think that this curse must rest upon
you all your life--it breaks my heart!" she moaned, while she
passionately covered his head and face with kisses. "They tell me
there is a God," she went on, hoarsely, as she again struggled to her
feet, "but I do not believe it--no God of love would ever create
monsters like Emil Correlli, and allow them to deceive and ruin
innocent girls, blackening their pure souls and turning them to fiends
incarnate! Yes, I mean it," she panted, excitedly, as she caught
Edith's look of horror at her irreverent and reckless expressions.

"Listen!" she continued, eagerly. "Only three years ago I was a pure
and happy girl, living with my parents in my native land--fair,
beautiful, sunny Italy--"

"Italy?" breathlessly interposed Edith, as she suddenly remembered
that she also had been born in that far Southern clime. Then she grew
suddenly pale as she caught the eyes of the little one gazing
curiously into her face, and also remembered that "the curse" which
his mother had but a moment before so deplored, rested upon her as
well.

Involuntarily, she took his little hand, and lifting it to her lips,
imprinted a soft caress upon it, at which the child smiled, showing
his pretty white teeth, and murmured some fond musical term in
Italian.

"You are an angel not to hate us both," said his mother, a sudden
warmth in her tones, a gleam of gratitude in her dusky eyes. "But were
you ever in Italy?" she added, curiously.

"Yes, when I was a little child; but I do not remember anything about
it," said Edith, with a sigh. "Do not stand with the child in your
arms," she added, thoughtfully. "Come, sit here, and then you can go
on with what you were going to tell me."

And, with a little sense of malicious triumph, Edith pulled forward
the beautiful rocker of carved ivory, and saw the woman sink wearily
into it with a feeling of keen satisfaction. It seemed to her like the
irony of fate that it should be thus occupied for the first time.

She would have been only too glad to heap all the beautiful clothes,
jewels, and laces upon the woman also, but she felt that they did not
belong to her, and she had no right to do so. Taking her little one on
her knee, the young woman laid his head upon her breast, and swaying
gently back and forth, began her story.

"My father was an olive grower, and owned a large vineyard besides, in
the suburbs of Rome. H