"'Through the long days,'" answered Felicia, who was now looking at the piano keys. "Ah! And the composer?" "Francis Boott." "Ah! Francis Boott, yes. And the words?" His head had now its attentive little bend. "They are by John Hay." To herself she added: "You _shall_ stop your little questions; you _shall_ say something different!" And again she looked up at him, her eyes strangely lustrous. And then at last he did say, "May I take the music home with me? You shall have it again to-morrow. It is a very beautiful song." Felicia rolled up the sheet and gave it to him, her hand slightly rigid as she did so from repressed emotion. At midnight the two guests took leave, Mrs. Tracy accompanying them down to the entrance portal. The irregular open space, or piazza, before the house had a weird appearance; the roadway looked like beaten silver; the short grass had the hue and gleam of new tin; the atmosphere all about was as visibly white as it is visibly black on a dark night. [Illustration: "AND AGAIN SHE LOOKED UP AT HIM"] "It's the moment exactly for our ghost to come out and clank his chains," said the lady of the house. "This intensely white moonlight is positively creepy; it is made for hobgoblins and sheeted spectres; the Belmonte monk must certainly be dancing on the top of his tower." "Oh no," said Felicia; "it's St. Mark's eve, so we're all under good protection. Hear the nightingales." She was in high spirits; her words came out between little laughs like giggles. Mrs. Tracy watched the two figures cross the grass and turn down the narrow passage whence the road descends in zigzags to Florence. "Poor Felicia," she said, when she had returned up the stairs to the drawing-room; "she is talking about St. Mark's eve, in order, I suppose, to bring up the idea of St. Agnes's. It's late, isn't it? They must want to walk!" "They?" said Mrs. North. "_She._" "Well, then, I wish she could," responded Mrs. Tracy. Going to the terrace door, she looked out. "Where is Dorothy?" "I sent her to bed; she was almost asleep in the hammock. If there is one thing she likes better than another, it is to curl herself up in some impossible place and fall asleep. Would you mind closing the glass doors? The nightingales hoot so." Mrs. Tracy closed and fastened the terrace entrance for the night. "What do you mean by saying that you wish she could?" Mrs. North went on. "You wouldn't have Alan Mackenzie marry that plain-looking, ill-tempered old maid, would you?" "Perhaps she is ill-tempered just because she is an old maid, Laura. And as to looks--if she were happy--" "Mercy! Are the Mackenzie millions to be devoted to the public charity of making a Felicia Philipps happy?" "Why, isn't it as good an object as a picture-gallery? Or even an orphan asylum? Felicia would be a great deal happier than all the happiness combined of the whole three hundred orphans out at St. Martin's at a Christmas dinner," suggested Charlotte Tracy, laughing.