"Camillo did not praise him much. It was not his way; but I felt how deeply he honored and loved him, and was rejoiced to think that necessity would often bring us together; only my mother seemed serious, and I knew what her gravity meant. "'Do not be alarmed, dear mother,' I said to her, as I was leaving the room. "'My daughter,' she answered, with infinite pride, 'it is not possible. I do not understand you. And you, my daughter, you do not understand yourself nor the world." "She was mistaken. Myself I did understand; the world I did not." Again the Marchesa was silent and tears stood in her eyes. She was seventy years old. Yes, but in love's calendar there is no December. "The days passed, and we saw Luigi constantly. He was very busy, but found plenty of time to be with us. His paintings were full of the same kind of power I felt in his character. He never wearied of the gorgeous atmospheric effects of which Titian and Paul, Giorgione and Tintoretto were the old worshippers. They touched him sometimes with a voluptuous melancholy in which he found a deeper inspiration. "Every day I loved him more and more, and nobody suspected it. He did not, because he was only glad to be in my society when he wanted criticism. He liked me as an intelligent woman. He loved Fiora as a bewitching child. "My mother watched us all, and soon saw there was nothing to fear. I sought to be lively--to frequent society; for I knew if my health failed I should be sent away from Venice and Luigi. He had given me a drawing--a scene composed from our first meeting upon the Lagune. The very soul of evening repose brooded upon the picture. It had even an indefinable tone of sadness, as if he had incorporated into it the sound of the vesper bell. It had been simply a melancholy sound to him. To the rest of us, who loved Camillo, it was something more than that. In his heart the mere remembrance of the island rang melancholy vespers forever. "This drawing I kept in a private drawer. At night, when I went to my chamber, I opened the drawer and looked at it. It lay so that I did not need to touch it; and as I gazed at it, I saw all his own character, and all that I had felt and lived since that evening. "At length the day came, on which the parents of Sulpizia came to my brother to speak of her portrait. Camillo listened to them quietly, and mentioned his friend Luigi as a man who could understand Sulpizia, and therefore paint her portrait. The parents were satisfied. It was an unusual thing; but at that time, as at all times, a great many unusual things could be done in convents, especially if one had a brother, who was Cardinal Balbo. IV. "It was a bright morning that Camillo carried Luigi in his gondola to the convent. He had merely said to him that there was a beautiful abbess to paint, an old friend of his; and Luigi replied that he would always willingly desert beautiful waters and skies for beautiful eyes. They reached the island"--