birds, with mother-of-pearl tinted plumage. The shadows were
lengthening now. The sunshine glanced from the smooth surface
of the lake as from burnished metal, and falling on the
coloured sails of the fishing-boats, made them gleam like sails
of crimson silk. But I wonder how much of this Beatrice really
saw.

She plucked an oleander from one of the tall marble urns set
along the balustrade, and pressed the pink blossom against her
face, and, closing her eyes, breathed in its perfume; then,
absent-minded, she let it drop, over the terrace, upon the path
below.

"It's impossible," she said suddenly, aloud. At last she went
into the house, and up to her rose-and-white retiring-room.
There she took a book from the table, and sank into a deep
easy-chair, and began to turn the pages.

But when, by and by, approaching footsteps became audible in
the stone-floored corridor without, Beatrice hastily shut the
book, thrust it back upon the table, and caught up another so
that Emilia Manfredi, entering, found her reading Monsieur
Anatole France's "Etui de nacre."

"Emilia," she said, "I wish you would translate the I Jongleur
de Notre Dame' into Italian."