ried out incessantly for Owen, she might in time
have been content.

Her first friends, the Moodys, had settled her in rooms with an old
servant of their own who had married a little Italian bookseller, and
were unremitting in their kindness to her; but Toni desired only to be
alone in her leisure hours and refused many of the invitations which
Mrs. Moody sent her from time to time.

So the days passed, quietly and tranquilly enough; and though to Toni it
seemed that all the joy, all the happiness had fled from life, that the
"sweet things" had lost their sweetness, the sunshine its glory, the
flowers their perfume, she was not ungrateful for the peace which had
come to her so unexpectedly.

Of her husband, of Greenriver, she never dared to think. She guessed,
drearily, that Owen would feel bound, in humanity, to institute a search
for his missing wife; but by a fortunate chance she had been able to
cover her tracks and disappear effectually; and as the weeks glided by,
and discovery was apparently as far off as ever, she began to feel, with
a miserable certainty, that in time her husband would relinquish the
search, and settle down to forget the frivolous, uneducated girl who had
not known how to appreciate the honour he had done her in making her his
wife.

To-day, this glorious spring day when the violet-scented air held a hint
of summer's warmth in its breath, Toni was making holiday.

Her employer was from home, called to London by the hint of a wonderful
book sale to be held there the following week; and Toni's time was her
own for nearly eight days.

She had started early that morning on a pilgrimage to the little village
where, long ago, she had passed the first happy years of her life; and
had arrived, before noon, to find, as she had half-expected, that none
of her old friends remained to give her welcome.

Old Fiammetta was dead, as was, of course, the kindly Padre who had
befriended Roger Gibbs when the young widower had decided to stay on,
with his little daughter, in the home which his Antonia had made so
joyous. A few of the children with whom she had played lived here still,
but they had grown into sturdy, swarthy young men and women who had long
since forgotten the dark-eyed child whose Italian had been as fluent as
their own; and though she wandered disconsolately through the straggling
little village, she met with no single glance of recognition.

She did not know that some months previously