“What is the matter, my dear child?” demanded Girardi, noticing her confusion. “Nothing!” she replied, with emotion. Then, as if ashamed of playing the hypocrite with her parent, suddenly added, “This medallion, father, contains a lock of your hair.” Then, as she turned towards Charney—“And this flower, sir, is the one you sent me by Ludovico. I have preserved it, and shall keep it forever.” In her words—in the sound of her voice—in the intuitive modesty which induced her to unite her father and the stranger in her explanations, there was at once so much ingenuousness and purity of feminine instinct, that Charney began for the first time to appreciate the true merits of Teresa Girardi. The remainder of that happy day elapsed amid effusions of mutual friendship, which every moment seemed to enhance. Independent of the secret power which attracts us towards another, the progress of friendship is always rapid in proportion to the time we know to be allowed us for the cultivation of dawning partiality. This was the first day that Charney and Teresa had conversed together; but they had had occasion to think so much of each other, and so few hours were assigned them to be together, that a mutual acquaintance was speedily accomplished; so that, when Charney, impelled by good breeding and good feeling, would fain have retired, in order to afford an opportunity to the father and daughter, so long separated, to converse together alone, Girardi and Teresa alike opposed the movement of retreat. “Are you about to leave us?” said the latter. “Do you, then, consider yourself a stranger to my father, _or to me_?” added the young girl in a tone of gentle reproach. And, in order to make him fully apprehend how little restraint was imposed upon her by his presence, Teresa began to detail to her father all that had befallen her from the moment of her departure from Fenestrella, and the means she had employed to bring together the two captives; addressing, at the conclusion of her narrative, a request to Charney, to relate all the little events of the citadel, and the progress of his studies connected with Picciola. After this appeal, the Count did not hesitate to confess the history of his early miseries—the tedium of his captivity—and the blessing vouchsafed him in the arrival of his plant: while Teresa, gay and naïve, stimulated his confession, by the liveliness of her inquiries and repartees.