But the children were in a state of ecstatic delight over Cartouche's amazement at the hundreds of gold fish which came crowding to the edge of the pond. He barked and snapped, snapped and barked in vain, and at last, in a frantic attempt to reach them, tumbled headlong into the pond, out of which he scrambled with his enthusiasm a little checked. Mrs Masters was not going; the walk, she said, was quite beyond her strength, and they left her strolling back to the house, where she gave them the hope she might employ herself in writing some letters which had long been waiting. The others set off merrily. There was Giovanni Moroni, a youth of two or three-and-twenty, dark, bright-eyed, with cropped hair, and a frank pleasant smile. It was to his _podere_, high up the hill, that they were bound. There was also his sister, the Contessa, and her husband, who was grey-headed and fierce. The children were theirs; they came from Genoa, and were wild with delight at the country life and their escape from a dark old palace. Kitty and Cartouche speedily became their victims. Bice was kind, but, this afternoon at least, a little graver than the others, for many thoughts were rushing through her head as they went clambering and laughing up the hill. That little outline which old Andrea had given to Jack told as much of her story as there was, to all appearance, to tell. But to her own thinking a great deal remained unknown--problems, possibilities, were sweeping through the air, and troubling her with a hundred perplexing doubts and shadows, which it was left to her unaided to solve or to disperse--to her, little more than a child, as she was! Everything was simple and a little dull to Mrs Masters. She had gone through such ill-usage and insult as would have seared most women's lives; and when it was all over, feathered out again with no more result than a mild assurance that from that time forward she had a right to whatever comfortable compensation she could get out of existence. Bice's passionate little soul reached the same conviction through quite another road, through all sorts of fiery impulses, horror at her father's cruelty, contempt, devotion, flinging of herself into the breach, heedless of anything she might have to suffer for her championship. So sad a warfare was it for a child to go through, that it was a wonder so much that was good and noble had survived it. She had always constituted herself her mother's protector, and now that her father was dead she had a sort of odd notion that it was she who had to make up to her for the sufferings she had gone through. She was ready to accept Mr Masters, anything that could help them to forget the old life. She was glad that her mother bore another name, and insisted upon sharing it herself against all law and right, and the equally persistent obstinacy of old Andrea. It was this which brought a sudden flame of anger into