ose from her chair.

"You are boring Miss Carson with my delinquencies," said the Prince,
sternly. His face was flushed, and he did not look either at the girl
or at the priest.

"But the prodigal's father?" said Miss Carson, smiling at the older
man. "Did he stand over him and upbraid him? You remember, he went to
meet him when he was yet a great way off. That was it, was it not,
Father?"

"Of course he did," cried Kalonay, laughing like a boy, and slipping
lightly to the terrace. "He met him half way and gave him the best he
had." He stepped to Miss Carson's side and the two young people moved
away smiling, and the priest, seeing that they were about to escape
him, cried eagerly, "But that prodigal had repented. This one----"

"Let's run," cried the Prince. "He will get the best of us if we stay.
He always gets the best of me. He has been abusing me that way for two
weeks now, and he is always sorry afterward. Let us leave him alone to
his sorrow and remorse."

Kalonay walked across the terrace with Miss Carson, bending above her
with what would have seemed to an outsider almost a proprietary right.
She did not appear to notice it, but looked at him frankly and listened
to what he had to say with interest. He was speaking rapidly, and as
he spoke he glanced shyly at her as though seeking her approbation, and
not boldly, as he was accustomed to do when he talked with either men
or women. To look at her with admiration was such a cheap form of
appreciation, and one so distasteful to her, that had he known it,
Kalonay's averted eyes were more of a compliment than any words he
could have spoken. His companions who had seen him with other women
knew that his manner to her was not his usual manner, and that he gave
her something he did not give to the others; that he was more discreet
and less ready, and less at ease.

The Prince Kalonay had first met Miss Carson and her mother by chance
in Paris, at the rooms of Father Paul, where they had each gone on the
same errand, and since that meeting his whole manner toward the two
worlds in which he lived had altered so strangely that mere
acquaintances noticed the change.

Before he had met her, the little the priest had said concerning her
and her zeal for their common desire had piqued his curiosity, and his
imagination had been aroused by the picture of a romantic young woman
giving her fortune to save the souls of the people of Messina; his
people whom h