Stella, less accustomed than I to my aunt’s style of conversation, burst into laughter, and I did the same, though I thought she expressed very well in her way the effects of her visits at the convent. At that minute the doors opened with a bang, and Teresina and Mariuccia made their appearance, loaded with flowers. At the sight of us there were exclamations of joy: “O Ginevra!... Contessa!... _E la bambina! Che piacere!_... How delightful to find you here!” A general embrace all around. Then details of all kinds—a stream of words almost incomprehensible. “_Che tempo! Che bellezza! Che paradiso!_ They had been amused _quanto mai_! And on the way back, moreover, they had met Don Landolfo, and Don Landolfo had invited Teresina to dance a cotillon with him at the ball to‐ morrow.... And Don Landolfo said Mariuccia’s toilet at the ball last Saturday was _un amore_!” It should be observed here that everything Lando said was taken very seriously in this household. His opinion was law in everything relating to dress, and he himself did not disdain giving these girls advice which cultivated notions of good taste, from which they were too often tempted to deviate. We were on the point of leaving when Mariuccia exclaimed: “Oh! apropos, Ginevrina, Teresina thought she saw Duke Lorenzo at Sorrento at a distance.” “Lorenzo?... At Sorrento? No, you are mistaken, Teresina. He went to Bologna a week ago, and will not be back till to‐morrow.” “You hear?” said Mariuccia to her sister. “I told you you were mistaken—that it was not he.” “It is strange,” said Teresina. “At all events, it was some one who resembled him very much. It is true, I barely saw him a second.” “And where was it?” I asked with a slight tremor of the heart. “At the window of a small villa away from the road at the end of a _masseria_(56) we happened to pass on the way.” She was mistaken, it was evident; but when Lorenzo returned that evening, a day sooner than I expected, I felt a slight misgiving at seeing him. He perceived it, and smilingly asked if I was sorry because he had hastened his return. I was tempted to tell him what troubled me, but was ashamed of the new suspicion such an explanation would have revealed, and I reproached myself for it as an injustice to him. I checked myself, therefore, and forced myself to forget, or at least to pay no attention to, the gossip of my cousins. To Be Continued. Fac‐Similes Of Irish National Manuscripts. Concluded.