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protestation, was the fact that he found her eminently desirable. Nor did her pride as “the girl up at the house” quarrel with her vanity as the simple object of Luke’s admiration. She wanted him to desire her as a girl; —to desire her to madness. And then she wanted to flout him, with her pretensions as a lady. This particularoccasion was by no means the first time she had drifted casually down the vicarage hill and lingered beside the stone-cutters. It was, however, an epoch in their curious relations. For the first time since she had been attracted to him, she deliberately moved close up to the stone he worked at, and entered into conversation. While this occurred, Lacrima, released from her rôle as the accomplice of amorous teasing, wandered away, picking listlessly the first red poppies of the year, which though less flaunting in their bold splendour than those of her childhood’s memories, were at least the same immortal classical flowers.
    As she bent down in this assuaging pastime, letting her thoughts wander so far from Nevilton and its tyrants, Lacrima became suddenly conscious that James Andersen had laid down his tools, resumed his coat, and was standing by her side.
    “A beautiful evening, Miss”; he said respectfully, holding his hat in his hand and regarding her with grave gentleness.
    “Yes, isn’t it?” she answered at once; and then was silent; while a sigh she could not suppress rose from the depths of her heart. For her thoughts reverted to another fair evening, in the days when England was no more than a name; and a sudden overpowering longing for kind voices, and the shadows of olives on warm hill-sides, rushed, like a wave, over her.
    “This must be near the Angelus-hour,” she thought; and somehow the dark grave eyes of the man beside her and his swarthy complexion made her think of those familiar forms that used to pass drivingtheir goats before them up the rocky paths of the Apennine range.
    “You are unhappy, Miss,” said James in a low voice; and these words, the only ones of genuine personal tenderness, except for poor Maurice’s, that had struck her sense for the last twelve months, brought tears to her eyes. Vennie Seldom had spoken kindly to her; but—God knows—there is a difference between the kindness even of the gentlest saint and this direct spontaneous outflow of one heart to another. She smiled; a little mournful smile.
    “Yes; I was thinking of my own country,” she murmured.
    “You are an Italian, Miss; I know it”; continued Andersen, instinctively leading her further away from the two golden heads that now were bending so close together over the Leonian stone.
    “I often think of Italy,” he went on; “I think I should be at home in Italy. I love everything I hear of it, everything I read of it. It comes from my mother, this feeling. She was a lady, you know Miss, as well born as any and with a passionate love of books. She used to read Dante in that little ‘ Temple ’ Series, which perhaps you have seen, with the Italian on one side and the English on the other. I never look at that book without thinking of her.”
    “You have many books yourself, I expect,—Mr.—Andersen. You see I know your name.” And Lacrima smiled, the first perfectly happy smile she had been betrayed into for many months.
    “It is not a very nice name,” said James, a little plaintively. I wish I had a name like yours Miss—Traffio.”
    “Why, I think yours is quite as nice,” she answered gravely. “It makes me think of the man who wrote the fairy stories.”
    James Andersen frowned, “I don’t like fairy stories,” he said almost gruffly. “They tease and fret me. I like Thomas Hardy’s books. Do you know Thomas Hardy?” Lacrima made a little involuntary gesture of depreciation. As a matter of fact her reading, until very lately, had been as conventual as that of a young nun. Vennie Seldom or the demure Reynolds girl could not have been more innocent of the