that absence had brought forgetfulness. There are moments when we
insist on judging another's heart by our own. All would be explained
some day--all would come right.

How lovely was the face that reflected itself in the glass as she stood
before it, smoothing back her long hair, murmuring sweet snatches of
Italian love-song, and blushing with sweeter love-thoughts as she sang!
All that had passed in that year so critical to her outer life--the
authorship, the fame, the public career, the popular praise--vanished
from her mind as a vapour that rolls from the face of a lake to which the
sunlight restores the smile of a brightened heaven.

She was more the girl now than she had ever been since the day on which
she sat reading Tasso on the craggy shore of Sorrento.

Singing still as she passed from her chamber, and entering the sitting-
room, which fronted the east, and seemed bathed in the sunbeams of
deepening May, she took her bird from its cage, and stopped her song to
cover it with kisses, which perhaps yearned for vent somewhere.

Later in the day she went out to visit Valerie. Recalling the altered
manner of her young friend, her sweet nature became troubled. She
divined that Valerie had conceived some jealous pain which she longed to
heal; she could not bear the thought of leaving any one that day unhappy.
Ignorant before of the girl's feelings towards Alain, she now partly
guessed them--one woman who loves in secret is clairvoyante as to such
secrets in another.

Valerie received her visitor with a coldness she did not attempt to
disguise. Not seeming to notice this, Isaura commenced the conversation