There were tears in her eyes as she sprang out of the car and greeted the waiting Andrews, who stood beside the open door. In the background Kate and Maggie hovered, all smiles and blushes; and it was evident that whatever construction a censorious world might have put upon Toni's rash departure, these faithful souls, at least, believed no evil. As a matter of fact very little of the truth ever did leak out. When it was known, as Herrick took good care it should be known, that Mr. Rose had gone to Italy to join his wife, who was wintering there, and would return with her after a few weeks spent together by the shores of the Mediterranean, gossip was at once checked and dumbfounded. If there had been anything wrong, said the neighbourhood, if Mrs. Rose had left her husband secretly as had been asserted, surely the fact of Mr. Rose's going to Italy to join her would not have been given quite so much publicity. Not only were there paragraphs in all the society papers--here Barry's hand was discernible--but there were even portraits of the rising young author and his wife, taken together in the garden of their whitewashed villa outside Naples; and it was decided, finally, that Mrs. Rose's hasty departure had been, after all, a good deal less mysterious than it had at first appeared. There was some consolation, to the more determined gossips of the neighbourhood, in spreading a rumour that the young mistress of Greenriver was far gone in consumption, and had been ordered to winter abroad; but Toni's appearance, on the day of her return, was quite sufficient to give the lie to that particular _canard_. Browned with the sun, her Southern colouring accentuated by the months spent in what was, after all, almost her native land, Toni looked the picture of glowing, vivid health; and when, late that night, she faced her husband with sparkling eyes across the rose-decked table, Owen realized, for the first time, that this quaint, half-foreign wife of his was giving promise of developing into actual beauty. * * * * * After dinner they strolled into the garden, Jock, deliriously happy, pressing closely to his mistress's side; and as they passed between the sleeping flowers Toni suddenly clung to her husband's arm. "Owen! Listen. The nightingale! Oh, isn't it perfect--that big yellow moon--and the roses--and now--_that_." "Is it better than Italy, Toni? Wouldn't you rather be there--on a night like this--in that land of beauty and romance?"