Colonel Carlyle was in brilliant spirits to-day. Always a fine talker, he surpassed himself on this occasion, and the guests exchanged significant glances, thinking that surely he had proposed to Miss Herbert and been accepted, for she, too, appeared more fascinating than usual, and exerted herself to please her elderly suitor. She had laid aside the more cumbrous appendages of mourning, such as crape and bombazine, and appeared in a handsome black silk, with filmy white laces at throat and wrists. A single spray of the scarlet salvia, carelessly broken and fastened in her dark hair, brightened her whole appearance, and made her creamy, olive complexion beautiful by the contrast. She was looking her best, as she wanted to do, for she felt that she was about to lose her slight hold upon the millionaire's heart and she meant to do her best to win back her lost ground. Alas for Felise's prospects! A pair of tearful, violet eyes, a little, white face, a quivering baby mouth, drawn with pain, had totally obscured the image of her bright, dark beauty in the colonel's heart. He was as foolishly in love with Bonnibel's dainty loveliness as any boy of twenty, and through all his brilliant talk to-day his heart was bounding with the thought of her, and he was revolving plans in his mind to free himself from what had almost become an entanglement with Miss Herbert, that he might spread his net to catch the beautiful little white dove that had fluttered across his path. "Miss Vere is better, I trust," he found courage to ask of Mrs. Arnold before he left that evening. His guilty conscience made him shrink from asking Felise even that simple question. He knew that he had paid her sufficient attention to warrant her in expecting a proposal, and now he began to feel just a little afraid of the flash of her great dark eyes. "She is better," Mrs. Arnold answered, coldly; "but not able to leave her sofa. Doctor Graham thinks it will be several weeks before she is well." "So," the enamored colonel thought to himself, "it will be several weeks before I can see her again. That seems like an eternity." CHAPTER XI. "'Italia, oh, Italia, thou who hast The fatal gift of beauty: which became A funeral dower of present woes and past,'" repeated the voice of a young man leaning from an upper window, and looking down upon the antique streets of famous Rome. "I think you have more taste for poetry than painting, Carl," said a second voice.