How little that man dreamed who heard him say this--that one heard him who for fifteen long years had guarded in the purest crystal of her memory the belief, "though all things fade and die, and even he forget me, yet _once_ he loved me"! This to her, the faded, slight little old maid, thumping up and down on her donkey like a Neapolitan girl's fist on her tambourine, whose crystal-guarded treasure turned to dust before her eyes, and who knew thus for the first time that it was but a spurious treasure she had guarded since that summer by the sea! She seemed somehow much smaller and paler, more faded and wrinkled, than before, when the donkey-woman laughed again. That unlovely creature said, with witch-like laughter, "You told Antonia that you loved her better than Giuseppe ever could--that you would marry her and make her a signora who should wear a gold ring and have shoes for every day. You went away saying that you would come back when you had sold your pictures. You have not come back until to-day, and you come back to laugh at poor Antonia for being such a fool as to believe a foreign signor would tell the truth to an island-girl." She gave a thundering thwack upon the donkeys' flanks as the party rushed across the tiny lava-paved piazza where all the island was gathered to see the new arrivals pass on through a dusky-arched street to the albergo-door. The cook, chambermaid, landlord, facchino and landlady rushed to bid the travellers welcome in island fashion. The landlord was barefooted; the landlady was the fruitful bough from which hung an apple-shaped infant; the cook, chambermaid and facchino were each armed with the insignia of their different professions--stewpan, broom and blacking-brush. Returning their salutations, the gentleman and lady descended from their steeds. Mr. Shaw turned to pay the donkey-woman for her services. And, behold! she lifted up once more that hoarse, broken voice to croak with frightful glee, "Make it a good buona mancia, Signor Ben, for the sake of old times. It was Giuseppe who answered your letters: I am Antonia his wife, mother of his ten children. It should be a good, a brave buona mancia that I did not wait for you--not thirteen years, not even six months, only till Giuseppe came home from his coral-fishing." Till her dying day the little old maid will never forget the look that settled upon his face after the first paralyzed moment in which he realized the woman's meaning. It was such a look that she hastily averted her eyes and tremblingly followed the chambermaid up the wide stone stairs. She never saw him afterward, for he left the island that same evening. But she heard of him only last summer. He has married a sprightly girl of eighteen, and has some renown in his own country--that of being the heaviest eater, sleeper, talker and _sitter_ of the Lotus Club. As his friends always said, he has no sentiment, even in his pictures.