, too, her history; yes, her bitter tragedy.

While continuing with her eyes on the picture, she from time to time
wiped them, and when the door-bell rang again, aware of being "a sight,"
took the precaution of retiring to her bedroom, so that if Vitale should
come to announce a visit,--it was not yet nine o'clock,--she could the
better make him understand that he must excuse her to the visitor; she
was going to bed.

But learning from the servant that Signor Fane was below, she changed
her mind, and chose unhesitatingly from her stock of useful infinitives
the appropriate two: "_Dire venire_."

Gerald found her by the fire, her fur-cloak over her shoulders, her
woolly afghan in her hands, and the picture on the chair before her.

"Well?" he asked expectantly, looking at it, too, after they had shaken
hands.

"You've made me feel sorry for myself. What's the use?" she answered in
a little sigh, keeping her reddened eyes turned away from him. "Hush!
Wait a moment! I was forgetting," she added, in comedy anticlimax, like
a housewife who in the midst of a scene of sentiment should smell the
dinner scorching. She jumped up, and went without the least noise to
close the door to Estelle's room, returning from which she illogically
fell to talking in a whisper.

"Estelle's gone to bed. She's got a snow-balling old cold. I've rubbed
her chest with liniment, and tied up her throat in a compress, and given
her hot lemonade, and she lies there with a hot water bottle at her feet
and grease on her nose, and let's hope she'll feel better in the
morning."

"Let's hope, indeed. I'm very sorry to hear she's ill. But she's sure to
be better by to-morrow, isn't she, with all that care and those
remedies. I hope you haven't a cold, too, Mrs. Hawthorne. You almost
look," he said innocently, "as if you had. This weather is dreadful. You
haven't, have you, dear friend?"

"No; I guess what you see is just that I've been crying. Don't say
anything about it. Don't notice it. Never mind. Come and sit down by the
fire and get warm. Your hand was like ice."

"It's very bad out, and not much better in, except here by your generous
fireside. I haven't been warm all day."

"Why didn't you come before? It isn't what I call balmy here, but I
expect it's balmier than at your place."

With her kindly unconstraint she reached for one of his hands to test
its temperature. With a little cry of "Mercy me!" she closed his numb
fingers between he