it. You're a good fellow; you're a dear fellow. Hush! I know the Evil
Eye when I see it. No more of that! A secret in your ear--I've said a
word for you to Carmina already. Give her time; she's not cold; young
and innocent, that's all. Love will come--I know, what I know--love
will come."

She laughed--and, in the very act of laughing, changed again. Fright
looked wildly at Ovid out of her staring eyes. Some terrifying
remembrance had suddenly occurred to her. She sprang to her feet.

"You said you were going away," she cried. "You said it, when you left
us yesterday. It can't be! it shan't be! You're not going to leave
Carmina, too?"

Ovid's first impulse was to tell the whole truth. He resisted the
impulse. To own that Carmina was the cause of his abandonment of the
sea-voyage, before she was even sure of the impression she had produced
on him, would be to place himself in a position from which his
self-respect recoiled. "My plans are changed," was all he said to
Teresa. "Make your mind easy; I'm not going away."

The strange old creature snapped her fingers joyously. "Good-bye! I
want no more of you." With those cool and candid words of farewell, she
advanced to the door--stopped suddenly to think--and came back. Only a
moment had passed, and she was as sternly in earnest again as ever.

"May I call you by your name?" she asked.

"Certainly!"