the city, where sleep seemed forgotten, and her
beautiful eyes had a seriousness contrasting strangely with the joyous
celebrations of victory she had been witnessing.

"What is it, mother?" he asked, in the soft, mellow tones of the
South, irresistible in their caressing qualities. The mother put out
her hand and clasped his without speaking.

"Homesick?" he ventured, trying to see her face as he drew a chair
closer; "longing for that twelve-year-old baby of yours? Evilena
certainly would enjoy the hubbub."

"No, Kenneth," she said at last: "it is not that. But I have been
watching the enthusiasm of these people over a victory they have
helped win for Italy's freedom--not their own. We have questions just
as vital in our country; some day they must be settled in the same
way; there seems no doubt of it--and then--"

"Then we will go out, have our little pass at each other, and come
back and go on hoeing our corn, just as father did in the Mexican
campaign," he said with an attempt at lightness; but she shook her
head.

"Many a soldier left the corn fields who never came back to them."

"Why, mother, what is it, dear? You've been crying, crying here all
alone over one war that is nothing to us, and another that may never
happen; come! come!" He put his arm about her as if she were a child
to be petted. Her head sank on his shoulder, though she still looked
away from him, out into the brilliantly lighted street.

"It was not the--the political justice or injustice of the wars," she
confessed after a little; "it was not of that I was thinking. But a
woman screamed out there on the street. They--the people--had just
told her the returns of the battle, and her son was among the
killed--poor woman! Her only son, Kenneth, and--"

"Yes, dear, I understand." He drew her closer and lifting her head
from her lap, placed it on his shoulder. She uttered a tremulous
little sigh of content. And then, with his arms about her, the mother
and son looked out on Paris after a victory, each thinking of their
own home, their own capital cities, and their own vague dread of
battles to be in the future.

CHAPTER VII.

As morning after morning passed without the arrival of other
mysterious boxes of flowers or of significant messages, the Marquise
began to watch Loris Dumaresque more than was usual with her. He was
the only one who knew; had he, educated by some spirit of jest, been
the sender of the blossoms?

And incon