Magnani understood all that was said, and, although he seldom ventured to speak, it was easy to read on his intelligent face that none of the ideas advanced were beyond the reach of his intellect. That young man had unusual faculties which would never have been cultivated, perhaps, but for his romantic passion. From the day that he first became enamored of the princess he had constantly devoted a portion of his leisure to reading and to the study of such works of art as he had been privileged to see. He had employed his vacations--what mechanics call the _dead season_--in travelling about Sicily on foot, viewing the treasures of antiquity with which that island, so beautiful in itself, is thickly strewn. While saying to himself that he was determined to remain humble and obscure, and persuading himself that he had no desire to depart from the rough simplicity of his class, he had been impelled by an irresistible instinct to improve his mind. The conversation having become general, was pleasant, unconstrained, and even merry, thanks to Pier-Angelo's sallies and Mila's artless remarks. But her artlessness was so touching that, far from wounding Michel's self-esteem in the princess's presence, it displayed his young sister's fifteen years to him in a new light. It is certain that he had paid too little heed to the very great change which a year had caused in the ideas of a girl of her age, when, thinking that he still had to do with a heedless and timid child, he had undertaken to blast all the hopes of her heart with a word. In every word that Mila said she manifested immense progress in respect to intelligence and decision of character, and the contrast between that development of her mind, and the inexperience, innocence and simplicity of her heart, presented a spectacle at once charming and affecting. The princess, with the delicate tact which women alone possess, caused Mila's charm to stand out in bolder relief by her replies, and neither Michel, nor Magnani, nor Pier-Angelo himself, had ever before imagined how much enjoyment might be derived from talking with that maiden. The moon rose, silvery white, in the cloudless sky. Agatha suggested a walk in the garden. They started together; but the princess soon strolled away from the others with Magnani, whose arm she took familiarly; and for half an hour they remained so far away from their friends that they were often out of sight. We will not divulge at this point what the princess had to say in confidence to the young mechanic during that tête-à-tête, which seemed to Michel so long and so extraordinary; indeed, we shall not divulge it at all. The reader will divine it at the proper time.