rouched in a tangle of wet reeds and
rushes, and watching for the flash of steel in the sunshine.

Austrian bayonets ... he raved of them in his dreams, and called upon
the names of comrades who had rotted in prisons or died in exile. His
young wife nursed him devotedly until he died, leaving her a widow at
twenty-seven. She had a small pension from the Government, and she
worked at dressmaking to eke it out.

Her only child had grown up to be a hopeless invalid. He could not go
to school, so he lay all day on the sofa by the window in the tiny
sitting-room and helped his mother with her sewing. His poor little
bony hands were very quick and dexterous.

In the evenings he read everything he could get hold of, books and
newspapers. The professors from the University, who came to see him
and were kind to him for his father's sake, told each other that he
was a genius and that his soul was eating up his frail body. They
wondered, pitifully, what poor Signora Aurelia would do when--

The mother was hopeful, however. "He takes such an interest in
everything that I think he must have a strong vitality though he seems
delicate," she said.

He had expressed a wish to learn English, and when Signora Aurelia
first heard of Olive she wrote asking her to come and see her. The De
Sancti lived a little way outside the Porta Romana, on the edge of the
hill and outside the town, and Maria advised her cousin not to go
there.

"It is so far out on a hot dusty road, and you will grow as thin and
dry as an old hen's drumstick if you walk so much. And I know the
signora is poor and will not be able to pay well."

Olive went, nevertheless. Signora Aurelia herself opened the door to
her and showed evident pleasure at seeing her. The poor woman had been
beautiful, and now that she was worn by time and sorrow she still
looked like a goddess, exiled to earth, and altogether shabby--a deity
in reduced circumstances--but none the less divinely fair and kind.
Her great love for her child had so moulded her that she seemed the
very incarnation of motherhood. So might Ceres have appeared as she
wandered forlornly in search of her lost Persephone, gentle, weary,
her fineness a little blunted by her woes.

"Are you the English signorina? Come in! My son will be so pleased,"
she said as she led the girl into the room where Astorre was working
at embroidery.

Olive saw a boy of seventeen sewing as he lay on the sofa. There were
some books on