"She isn't; she is a Swede. She was brought here last summer by a queer old English woman, who has lived for ten years, off and on, in that villa just above the second bridge; she had a fancy for servants who could not speak a word of English, and she picked up this girl in Stockholm during one of her journeys--for when she wasn't in Tuscany, she was trotting all over the globe. She died, at the last, suddenly; it was two months ago, and, so far, her heirs in England, distant cousins, I believe, have refused to do anything for this stranded maid. The Swedish consul, however, has taken it up, and I hear that there is prospect of a remittance some time or other--enough to pay her expenses back to Stockholm. Fortunately for herself, she had learned to speak Italian. And she had made friends in Tre Ponti; she is staying with these friends now, and turning her hand meanwhile to anything that offers in order to support herself until the money comes. Let's go home and have some tea. Dinner will be very late this evening on account of the festa; no hope of its being on the table before nine o'clock." "Just a minute more," said Gray. It was no wonder that the man who was unfamiliar with the scene should wish to linger. The sun was sinking out of sight, sending up broad shafts of gold as he disappeared; above the gold a deep rose tint filled the sky. The water of the stream was gilded, and gilded were the bristling turrets of a fourteenth-century monastery, which here crowns a crag where the gorge makes a bend towards the south. Opposite, beyond Casa Colombina, the soaring Tower of the Dove was flushed with pink. And on the eastern side, over their heads, the little stone town with its bastioned walls was colored in bars of salmon and pearl. The close circle of hills, the wider amphitheatre of mountains behind, all of them clothed in the violet mantle which mountains wear in Italy, were tipped with orange. And somehow all these lovely hues seemed to deepen as the chimes of Tre Ponti began to ring the Angelus. The peal of the monastery on the crag soon joined in the anthem, these latter bells flinging themselves far out from their open belfry against the sky, to and fro, to and fro, with an abandon which was in itself a picture. And when the chime stopped, music of another kind took its place, for coming up the road appeared the same band of girls singing their slow hymn; they had left the gorge, and were returning by way of the bridge to Tre Ponti. They were no longer a small company; a dozen women had joined them, and six or eight youths followed behind. Modesta accompanied the girls, having finished her duties as escort to Paola and her children. "Here is your waitress coming back," said Gray. "How handsome she looks!"