She gave a long sigh, and presently became aware from a slight movement that someone had stepped out upon the balcony, then a voice said, “I beg your pardon. I didn’t know anyone was out here. Will my cigar annoy you?” “And I with a Spanish brother-in-law who smokes cigarettes eternally? No, Mr. Lisle, I have passed beyond feeling annoyed at so slight a thing as that. In the convent, of course, the sisters don’t smoke.” “The convent?” “Yes, I have been there for the past two years completing my education. I have learned many things--especially from the French girls.” She did not see the young man’s frown. “And from the sisters?” “Oh, I learned things from them, too, the dear doves. I have become fluent in excellent French. I learned to embroider beautifully; I can sketch--a little; my music isn’t so terrible and--well, the lives of the saints may be very edifying, but somehow they never did interest me as much as the lives of the sinners.” “Whom do you class among the sinners?” “Myself for one.” “I can scarcely credit that. Are you such a sinner?” “We are all miserable sinners, so sister Cecile used to say, and I think she meant I was one of the chief, yet, I am sure she loved me. Some day I must go back there to see them all, for I was really very happy after a fashion.” “And now?” “Oh, I am happier still now, though I was happiest in the dear old home. I have just been thinking about it. The smell of the roses brought it all back to me.” “Tell me about it. May I sit here?” He threw away his cigar and established himself on the bench which ran along one side of the _galleria_, while Patty sat opposite in a porch chair. “It is in Kentucky, you know,” the girl said, “not far from Lexington, and I spent all my childhood there. I had a governess after my mother died, then, after my father’s death, I went to boarding-school for a while. I was still at school when my sister married. We lived in the old home for a couple of years after that, then, when Dr. Estradas had to come over here, they brought me with them and sent me to a convent to finish my studies.” “Then you, too, are an orphan.” “Yes, I have no one but Tina.” “I have my grandfather and one uncle, no brothers or sisters. I, too, remember my old Kentucky home and my happy boyhood.” “Don’t you get homesick, oh so homesick for it sometimes? I do. ‘For the sun shines bright on my old Kentucky home, my old Kentucky home so far away,’” she sang softly. “That almost breaks my heart, for my mother used to sing it to me, and it brings back everything, everything, the old house with the white columns, the roses in bloom, the sun shining on the trees. Oh, dear, why can’t things stay as we want them?” [Illustration: “‘DON’T YOU GET HOMESICK?’”] “There is nothing we can count on but change.” “Alas, no. Do you ever expect to go back?” “I should like to, but I probably shall not while my grandfather lives.”