s will hid under her woman's shape."

He reflected uncomfortably that Mark Brendon must hear every word
about to pass; but there was no help for that.

"Our Italian way is to approach the parents of the loved one,"
explained Doria. "To win you is to be far on my way, for you stand
to her in the place of parent. Is it not so? She cannot live alone.
She was not meant by God to be a single woman, or a widow woman.
There is a saying in my tongue, 'She who is born beautiful is born
married.' I terribly fear that somebody else will come."

"But what about your ambitions--to wed an heiress and claim the
title and the territory of your vanished forbears?"

Doria swept his hands to right and left with a great gesture, as
though casting away his former hopes.

"It is fate," he said. "I planned my life without love. I had never
loved and never wanted to. I guessed that love would appear after I
had married money and earned the necessary means and leisure to
love. But now all is changed. The arrow has sped. There has come the
spirit simpatica instead of the necessary rich woman. Now I do not
want the rich woman but only she who wakens my passion, adoration,
worship. Life has nothing in it but Madonna--English Jenny. What are
castles and titles--pomp and glory--when weighed against her? Dust,
padron mio, all dust!"

"And what about her, Giuseppe?"

"Her heart is hidden; but there is that in her eyes that tells me to
hope."

"And what about me?"

"Alas! Love is selfish. But you are the last I would seek to hurt or
to rob. You have been very good to me and Madonna loves you. It is
certain that if the very best happened, she would do nothing to
offend one who has been to her as you have been."

"We can stow the subject for six months anyhow," replied Bendigo,
lighting his long clay. "I suppose, in your country as well as mine,
there's a right and a wrong way to approach a woman; and seeing my
girl's a widow--made so under peculiarly sad circumstances--you'll
understand that love talk is out of the question for a good bit yet
a while."

"Most truly you speak. I hide even the fire in my eyes. I only dare
look at her between the lids."

"There's a lot goes to Jenny, and no doubt such a keen blade as you
knows that very well. But all's in the air at present. Her husband
left no will and that means, since there's nobody else with any
claim upon him, she has all his dough--five hundred a year perhaps.
But there's much more t