dazzling throat; the flush of his coming is on her lips; she might
utter the dawn!"

"You're a poet, Don Ippolito," laughed the painter. "What property of
the sun is in her angry-looking eyes?"

"His fire! Ah, that is her greatest charm! Those strange eyes of hers,
they seem full of tragedies. She looks made to be the heroine of some
stormy romance; and yet how simply patient and good she is!"

"Yes," said Ferris, who often responded in English to the priest's
Italian; and he added half musingly in his own tongue, after a moment,
"but I don't think it would be safe to count upon her. I'm afraid she
has a bad temper. At any rate, I always expect to see smoke somewhere
when I look at those eyes of hers. She has wonderful self-control,
however; and I don't exactly understand why. Perhaps people of strong
impulses have strong wills to overrule them; it seems no more than
fair."

"Is it the custom," asked Don Ippolito, after a moment, "for the
American young ladies always to address their mammas as _mother_?"

"No; that seems to be a peculiarity of Miss Vervain's. It's a little
formality that I should say served to hold Mrs. Vervain in check."

"Do you mean that it repulses her?"

"Not at all. I don't think I could explain," said Ferris with a certain
air of regretting to have gone so far in comment on the Vervains. He
added recklessly, "Don't you see that Mrs. Vervain sometimes does and