She was bent on captivating the wary heart of the grave, handsome host, and in this ambition she was encouraged by her dashing aunt, Mrs. Dunn, who, by the way, was not a widow, as Mrs. Murray had said, but a divorcee. She always spoke of herself as a widow, however, and her friends very kindly supported the little fiction. Truth to tell, Mrs. Murray rather seconded the designs of Alys. She disliked to see Francis growing into a bachelor past thirty, with no particular interest in the fair sex, indeed with a soupçon of cynical indifference toward it. She wished him to marry, and Alys Audenreid, only twenty years old, pretty, and with a neat fortune, seemed a very suitable match. Alexie was already engaged to Ralph Allen, and the twin sisters had always planned to be married on the same night. The wedding-day was set for January, so Alys would have to hasten the wooing of the laggard lover. Into this coterie of friends, with their selfish aims and desires, Italy Vale had now entered, a jarring, unwelcome element. What would be the outcome of it all? * * * * * A week had passed--a month it seemed to the lonely girl who felt herself an alien to those by whom she was surrounded. To Francis Murray, the man who possessed such a peculiar interest for Italy, she was almost as much a stranger as on the first day she came. “He avoids me, courteously, yet palpably,” she said to herself bitterly. “But no wonder. It is his guilty conscience. The daughter’s presence is a reminder of the parents whom he wronged. Oh, Heaven, can it be true that this noble-looking man is the criminal I suspect, whom I have vowed to hunt down? But who else was there to profit by my father’s death?” and she watched Francis Murray with a painful intensity, till she grew to know almost every expression of the thoughtful, handsome face that was so grave and cold whenever it turned to her, the girl who had thrust herself upon his care. Almost the first day of her coming, Mrs. Murray had said to her almost apologetically: “My son is very quiet and studious. You must not expect him to be very cordial. It is not his way. He likes best to be left alone in his library among his books.” “I shall not intrude upon him, madam,” the girl answered almost haughtily, and her footsteps never strayed near the beautiful room where she had first met the gaze of the startled, blue-gray eyes of Francis Murray. She quite understood the delicate hint that she was to keep out of his way. But she did not believe that it was not his way to be cordial. She noticed him with the others. She saw that he could unbend from his grave dignity to jest and laugh with them. Italy soon found out that Alys Audenreid adored her host. She owned to herself that it was not strange. There was a fascination about this man that made itself felt even without effort of his own. “I, too, could admire him, but for my terrible suspicions,” she owned to herself, with unwilling candor.