Mrs. Tracy threw a lace scarf over her head and went out to the garden. The long aisles under the trees were flooded with moonlight, the air was perfumed with the fragrance of the many flowers; but there was no Dorothy. She entered the house by another door, and, going softly up the great stairway, turned towards Dorothy's rooms at the south end of the long villa. Here a light was visible, coming under the door of the sitting-room; the aunt did not lift the latch, she stood outside listening. Yes, Dorothy was there, and she was singing to herself in a low tone, playing the accompaniment with the soft pedal down: "Through the long days, the long days and the years, What will my loved one be, Parted from me, parted from me, Through the long days and years?" "She is up there singing; singing all alone," reported the aunt, when she came back to the boudoir down-stairs. "I suppose you like that better than not alone?" suggested Mrs. North. Waddy came to Belmonte five times without success. Then he left Florence. Dorothy did not stroll in the garden with Owen Charrington. If her mother and aunt were outside when he came, she remained with them there; but if they were in the drawing-room or the boudoir, she immediately led her guest within; then she sat looking at him while he talked. Charrington talked well; all he said was amusing. Dorothy listened and laughed. If he paused, she urged him on again. This urgency of hers became so apparent that at last it embarrassed him. To carry it off he attacked her: "You force me to chatter, Mrs. Mackenzie--to chatter like a parrot!" "Yes," answered Dorothy, "you must talk; you must talk all the time." "'All the time'--awfully funny Americanism!" "And the French 'tout le temps'?" "Oh, French; I don't know about French." "Of course you don't. We are willing to be funny with the French. Are you 'very pleased' to be here to-day? Answer." "Of course I am very pleased." "And you would say, wouldn't you, 'Directly I returned to Florence, I bought a horse'?" "But I didn't," said Charrington, laughing; "I only hired one. And that reminds me, Mrs. Mackenzie; you can't think how divine it is now at four o'clock in the morning. Won't you go for a ride at that hour some day soon? Mrs. North and Mrs. Tracy could follow in the carriage" (with a look towards those ladies). "Ride?" repeated Dorothy. A flush rose in her cheeks. "No," she answered, in an altered voice--"no!" She said nothing more, and she did not speak again; she sat looking at the floor. Mrs. North filled the pause with her placid sentences. But Dorothy's manner was so changed and constrained that the young Englishman soon went away. The girl had taken something into her head. But it would not last long; nothing ever did last long with Dorothy.