bric-a-brac--and begged her uncle to accompany her.

"I wish no one else to come," she said, with her own little, emphatic
nod.

"Oh, ho! secrets!" exclaimed Malcom; "so we must turn aside!"

"Do go to drive with me," begged Howard. "Here we are close to my hotel,
and I can have the team ready right off."

So they walked a few steps along the Lung' Arno to the pleasant, sunny
Hotel de la Grande Bretagne, which Howard had chosen for his Florentine
home, and soon recrossed the Arno, and swept out through Porta Romana
into the open country, behind Howard's beautiful gray horses.

The crisp, cool air brought roses into Barbara's and Bettina's cheeks,
and ruffled their pretty brown hair. Malcom was in high spirits after
his long confinement to the house, and Howard tried to throw off a
gloomy, discouraged feeling that had hung over him all the morning.
Seated opposite Barbara, and continually meeting her frank, steadfast
eyes, he seemed to realize as he had never before done the obvious truth
of Mrs. Douglas's words, when she had said that Barbara was perfectly
unconscious of his love for her; and all the manhood within him strove
to assert itself to resist an untimely discovery of his feeling, for
fear of the mischief it might cause.

Howard had been doing a great deal of new thinking during the past
weeks. He suddenly found himself surrounded by an atmosphere wholly
different from that in which he had before lived.