Nina? it is _bizness_."

"_Beezness!_--_beezness!_" she said, smiling. "It is enough of
_beezness_. You go for a walk with me--yes? How beautiful the weather!"
she continued, in a suddenly altered tone, as she looked out at the
sunlit foliage of the Green Park; and then she murmured, almost to
herself, in those soft Italian vowel sounds:

"Ah, Leo mio, che sarei felice d'essere in campagna!"

It was a kind of sigh; perhaps that was the reason she had inadvertently
relapsed into her own tongue. And as they went down the stairs, and he
opened the door for her, the few words he addressed to her were also in
Italian.

"The country!" he said. "We will just step across the street, Nina, and
you will find yourself in what is quite as pretty as the country at this
time of year. You may fancy yourself sitting in the Villa Reale, if you
could only have a flash of blue sea underneath the branches of the
trees."

But when they had crossed over and got into the comparative quiet of the
Park, she resolutely returned to her English again; and now she was
telling him about the people in Naples whom he used to know, and of
their various fortunes and circumstances. Sometimes neither of them
spoke; for all this around them was very still and pleasant--the fresh
foliage of the trees and the long lush grass of the enclosures as yet
undimmed by the summer dust; the cool shadows thrown by the elms and
limes just moving as the wind stirred the wide branches; altogether a
world of soft, clear, sunny green, unbroken except by here and there a