old Elsie called for her, she wondered that the day had gone so fast.

Old Elsie returned with no inconsiderable triumph from her stand. The
cavalier had been several times during the day past her stall, and once,
stopping in a careless way to buy fruit, commented on the absence of
her young charge. This gave Elsie the highest possible idea of her own
sagacity and shrewdness, and of the promptitude with which she had taken
her measures, so that she was in as good spirits as people commonly are
who think they have performed some stroke of generalship.

As the old woman and young girl emerged from the dark-vaulted passage
that led them down through the rocks on which the convent stood to the
sea at its base, the light of a most glorious sunset burst upon them, in
all those strange and magical mysteries of light which any one who has
walked that beach of Sorrento at evening will never forget.

Agnes ran along the shore, and amused herself with picking up little
morsels of red and black coral, and those fragments of mosaic pavements,
blue, red, and green, which the sea is never tired of casting up from
the thousands of ancient temples and palaces which have gone to wreck
all around these shores.

As she was busy doing this, she suddenly heard the voice of Giulietta
behind her.

"So ho, Agnes! where have you been all day?"

"At the Convent," said Agnes, raising herself from her work, and smiling
at Giulietta, in her frank, open way.