*

A week passed. Part of another. Eve saw no more of Luigi, but was yet
all the time uncomfortably conscious of his espionage. He was hardly a
living being to her, but, as soon as night fell, the soft starry nights
now in which there was no moon, she felt him like a darker film of
spirit haunting the shadow. In the daytime, sunshine reassured her, and
she remained almost at peace.

She was sitting one warm afternoon at the open window up-stairs, looking
over a box of airy trifles, flowers and bows and laces, searching for a
parcel of sheer white love-ribbon, a slip of woven hoarfrost that was
not to be found. There was none like it to be procured; this was the
night of the little masquerade; it was indispensable; and immediately
she proceeded to raise the house. In answer to her descriptive inquiry,
Paula, who every noon nestled as near the sun as possible, responded in
a high key from the attic a descriptive negative; neither had her
mother, waking from a _siesta_ in the garden, seen any white gauze
folderols. The three voices made the air well acquainted with the
affair.

However, Eve was not to be baffled; she remembered distinctly having had
the love-ribbon in her hands on the day she first proposed the dress; it
must be found, and she sat down again at the open casement, intrenched
behind twenty boxes of like treasure, in any one of which the thing
might have hidden itself away, while her mother came up and established
herself with a fan at the other window, and Paula, descending from her
perch, rummaged the neighboring dressing-room.

On the opposite side of the street stretched a long strip of shaven
turf, known as the Parade, yet seldom used for anything but
summer-evening strolls, and below its velvet terraces, in a green
dimple, lay a pool, borrowing all manner of umberous stains from the
shore, and yet in its very heart contriving to reflect a part of heaven.
Languishing elm-trees lined its edge, and beneath the boughs, whose
heavily drooping masses seemed like the grapes of Eshcol, rude benches
offered rest to the weary.

On one of these benches now sat a person profoundly occupied in carving
something into its seat. If he could easily have heard the voices in the
dwelling opposite, he had not once glanced up. Now and then he paused
and leaned his head upon the arm that lay along the rail, then again he
pursued his task. Once, when his progress, perhaps, had exceeded
expectation, or the striking o