f a clock beneath some distant spire
announced no need of haste, he laid down his knife, left his occupation,
and came to lean against the low fence beneath Eve's window and gaze
daringly up. Eve did not see him. Her mother did, and held her breath
lest Eve should turn that way, and, having directed Eve's glance
elsewhere, shook her fan at the bold boy. But there was no insolence in
Luigi's gaze. He seemed merely wishing that his work should be marked;
and, having attracted fit attention, he returned quietly to the bench
and the carving once more.

At length the sun hung high over the west, preparing to fall into his
hidden resting-place that colored all the cloudless heaven with its
mounting tinge. Luigi rose and inspected his work. Then again he crossed
the street and stood below Eve's window. It was a long time that he
leaned with his arms folded on the bar of the low paling. Perhaps he
meant that she should look at him. She had closed the last of her
receptacles, and, dismissing the matter, for want of better employment,
her scissors were tinkering upon a tiny hand-glass with a setting
thickly crusted in crystals, a trifle that one clear day a sailor diving
from her father's ship had found upon the bottom of the sea,--a very
mermaid's glass dropped in some shallow place for Eve herself, a glass
that had reflected the rushing of the storm, the sliding of the keel
above, the face of many a drowning mariner. Careless of all that, at the
moment, she held it up now to the light to see if further furbishing
could brighten it, and as she did so was hastily checked. She had caught
sight of a dark face just framed and mirrored, the sad eyes raised and
resting on her own, luminous no more, but heavy, and longing, and dull
with a weight of woe. At the same moment, Paula, who had by no means
abandoned the lost love-ribbon, cried from within,--

"Well, Miss, the lutestring has been spirited away, and no less. I've
searched the house through, and nobody has it."

"_Qualcheduno l' ha_," breathed a sweet, melancholy tone from below; and
they turned and saw it in Luigi's hands, the frosty film of gossamer. He
held it up a moment, pressed it to his lips, folded it again into his
breast; and if it was plain that somebody had it, it was plainer still
that somebody meant to keep it. And then, as if twin stars were bending
over him out of the bluest deeps of heaven, Luigi kept Eve's eyes awhile
suspended on his despairing gaze, and wit