Signorina!"

"Who told you?"

"You did! You looked so pleased with yourself! Oh, do tell me all
about her!"

"Well, I've had a long talk with the woman. Shall we walk up and
down?"

And off they went, with that absence of ceremony which characterises
life on shipboard, leaving Mr. DeWitt to bury his cities all unaided
and unapplauded. Then, as the two walked up and down,--literally up
and down, for the ship was pitching a bit, and sometimes they were
labouring up-hill, and sometimes they were running down a steep
incline,--as they walked up and down Mr. Grey told his story.

The woman, Giuditta, had confided to him all she knew, and he had
surmised more. Giuditta had known the family only since the time,
three years ago, when she had been called in to take care of the
little Cecilia during the illness of the Signora. The father had been
a handsome good-for-nothing, who had got shot in a street row in
that quarter of New York known as "Little Italy." He was
nothing,--_niente_, _niente_;--but the Signora! Oh, if the gentleman
could but have known the Signora, so beautiful, so patient, so sad!
Giuditta had stayed with her and shared her fortunes, which were
all, alas! misfortunes,--and had nursed her through a long
decline. But never a word had she told of her own origin,--the
beautiful Signora,--nor had her father's name ever passed her lips.
Had she known that she was dying, perhaps then, for the child's
sake, she might have forgotten her pride. But she was always
thinking she should get well,--and then, one day, she died!

There was very little left,--only a few dollars; but among the squalid
properties of the pitiful little stage where the poor young thing had
enacted the last act of her tragedy, was one picture, a _Madonna_,
with the painter's name, G. Bellini, just decipherable. It was a
little picture, twelve inches by sixteen, in a dingy old frame, and
not a pretty picture at that. But a kind man, a dealer in antiquities,
had given Giuditta one hundred dollars for it. "Think of that,
Signore! One hundred dollars for an ugly little black picture no
bigger than that!"

"I suppose," Mr. Grey remarked, as they stood balancing themselves at
an angle of many degrees,--"I suppose that the picture was
genuine,--else the man would hardly have paid one hundred dollars for
it."

"And would it be worth more than that?"

"A trifle," he replied, rather grimly. "Somewhere among the
thousands."

"But why should th