be sure."

She glanced indicatively down the lawn, in the direction of Peter's
retreating tweeds.

Beatrice had looked blank. But now she looked--first, perhaps, for
a tiny fraction of a second, startled--then gently, compassionately
ironical.

"My poor Kate! Are you out of your senses?" she enquired, in accents of
concern, nodding her head, with a feint of pensive pity.

"Not I," returned Mrs. O'Donovan Florence, cheerfully confident. "But I
'm thinking I could lay my finger on a long-limbed young Englishman less
than a mile from here, who very nearly is. Hasn't he asked you yet?"

"Es-to bete?" Beatrice murmured, pitifully nodding again.

"Ah, well, if he has n't, it's merely a question of time when he will,"
said Mrs. O'Donovan Florence. "You've only to notice the famished
gaze with which he devours you, to see his condition. But don't try to
hoodwink me. Don't pretend that this is news to you."

"News!" scoffed Beatrice. "It's news and nonsense--the product of your
irrepressible imagination. Mr. What's-this-his-name-is, as you call him,
and I are the barest acquaintances. He's our temporary neighbour--the
tenant for the season of Villa Floriano--the house you can catch a
glimpse of, below there, through the trees, on the other side of the
river."

"Is he, now, really? And that's very interesting too. But I wasn't
denying it." Mrs. O'Donovan Florence smiled, with derisive sweetness.
"The fact of his being the tenant of the house I can catch a glimpse
of, through the trees, on the other side of the river, though a valuable
acquisition to my stores of knowledge, does n't explain away his
famished glance unless, indeed, he's behind with the rent: but even
then, it's not famished he'd look, but merely anxious and persuasive.
I'm a landlord myself. No, Trixie, dear, you've made roast meat of the
poor fellow's heart, as the poetical Persians express it; and if he has
n't told you so yet with his tongue, he tells the whole world so with
his eyes as often as he allows them to rest on their loadstone, your
face. You can see the sparks and the smoke escaping from them, as though
they were chimneys. If you've not observed that for yourself, it can
only be that excessive modesty has rendered you blind. The man is head
over ears in love with you. Nonsense or bonsense, that is the sober
truth."

Beatrice laughed.

"I 'm sorry to destroy a romance, Kate," she said; "but alas for the
pretty one you 've woven, I happen t