With the cadence of the measure the sound was broken capriciously, the book had been thrown down, and the singer herself stood balancing in the doorway between the rooms, a hand on either side,--still lightly trilling her scales, smiling, beaming, blue-eyed, rosy. The sunbeam that entered behind the shade swinging in the wind fell upon the beautiful masses of her light-brown hair, and illumined all the shifting color that played with such delicate suffusion upon her cheek and chin; her face was a deep, innocent smile of joy; she would have been dazzling but for the blushes that seemed to go and come with her breath and make her human; and so much did she embody one's ideal of the first woman that no one wondered when all called her Eve, although her name was Rosamond, and she was the Rose of the World. Directly Eve saw the boy kneeling there over his tray, the cast suspended in his hand, as he leaned intently forward with the rich carmine deepening the golden tint of his brow and with that yellow fire in his wine-dark eyes, she ceased singing, and, not hesitating to mimic the well-known call, cried,-- "Images?" Then Luigi remembered where he was, and answered the question asked five minutes since. "Signora, seven shillings." "That is reasonable, now," said the lady. "I will have it for that sum. Do you cast these things yourself?" "My master and I." "Have you been long here?" "Alas! much, much time," said he, with melancholy earnestness. "And from what part of Italy did you come?" she kindly asked. "_Vengo da Roma_" replied the boy, drawing himself up proudly. "The Roman peasant is a prince, mamma," said Eve quickly, in an undertone. Luigi glanced up instantly and smiled, and offered to her a little plaster cherub, silver-gilt, just spreading wings for flight. "It is for her," said he, with an appealing look at the mother. "For her,--_la principessina_. I myself made it." No one perceived his adroit under-meaning; but Eva bethought herself of her school-phrases, and venturously selected one. "_E grazioso_!" said she. Luigi's face kindled anew; it seemed as if the sound of his native tongue were like some magic wand that called the blind blood to his cheek or drove it into the pools of his heart; the smile broke all over his face as light dances on burnished gold; he turned to her boldly with outstretched hands, like some one asking an alms. "Give to me a song," he said. "_Volontieri_" quoth Eve, in hesitating accent, and flitted back to her piano. Without a thought, he followed. It was a little song of flowers and sunshine that Eve began to carol over the carolling keys; the words fell into the sweetness of the air, that seemed laden with the morning murmur of bees and blossoms; it was but a verse or two, with a refrain that went repeating all the honeyed burden, till Luigi's face fairly burned with pleasure, where he stood at timid distance in the doorway.