Sylvia bade him come in the morning; with a deep bow to her and to the stranger he departed, twanging his guitar. Mrs. Gainsborough, who by this time had reached the point of thinking that her American widower existed only to be oracular, wished to ask his advice about the stranger, and was quite offended with Sylvia for telling her rather sharply that she did not want all the inmates of the pension buzzing round the frightened child. "Chocolate would be more useful than advice," Sylvia said. "I know you're very down on poor Mr. Linthicum, but he's a mass of information. Only this morning he was explaining how you can keep eggs fresh for a year by putting them in a glass of water. Now I like a bit of advice. I'm not like you, you great harum-scarum thing." Mrs. Gainsborough was unable to remain very long in a state of injured dignity; she soon came up to Sylvia's bedroom with cups of chocolate. "And though you laugh at poor Mr. Linthicum," she said, "it's thanks to him you've got this chocolate so quick, for he talked to the servant himself." With this Mrs. Gainsborough left the room in high good humor at the successful rehabilitation of the informative widower. The girl, whose name was Concetta, had long ceased to lament, but she was still very shy, and Sylvia found it extremely difficult at first to reach any clear comprehension of her present trouble. Gradually, however, by letting her talk in her own breathless way, and in an odd mixture of English, French, German, and Italian, she was able to put together the facts into a kind of consecutiveness. Her father had been an Italian, who for some reason that was not at all clear had lived at Aix-la-Chapelle. Her mother, to whom he had apparently never been married, had been a Fleming. This mother had died when Concetta was about four, and her father had married a German woman who had beaten her, particularly after her father had either died or abandoned his child to the stepmother--it was not clear which. At this point an elder brother appeared in the tale, who at the age of eleven had managed to steal some money and run away. Of this brother Concetta had made an ideal hero. She dreamed of him even now and never came to any town but that she expected to meet him there. Sylvia had asked her how she expected to recognize somebody who had disappeared from her life when she was only six years old, but Concetta insisted that she should know him again. When she said this, she looked round her with an expression of fear and asked if anybody could overhear them. Sylvia assured her that they were quite alone, and Concetta said in a whisper: "Once in Milano I saw Francesco. Hush! he passed in the street, and I said, 'Francesco,' and he said, 'Concettina,' but we could not speak together more longer." Sylvia would not contest this assertion, though she made up her mind that it must have been a dream. "It was a pity you could not speak," she said.