An Italian afternoon sun smote upon the rock-hewn path with lances of fire; shadow there was none; the way was steep; her wild flight had carried her hardly farther than the end of the hotel precincts to the sudden, bold little eminence topped by pine-trees, round which the path wound. Here a jutting rock, half buried in undergrowth of juniper, rosemary, and such-like, offered a broad seat, sheltered from view by the turn of the pine-topped steep to those mounting the ridge, but fully exposed to the broad sun-blaze beating on the mule-path; and here she subsided, looking across the shadowy blue of the ravine through wet eyes, and propping herself by clutching at the lichen-embroidered edge of the rock, a prey to these mournful reflections, when something stirred under the feathery bunch of pines overhead, some pebbles and earth came rattling down, there was a light thud on the path beside her, and there, with melancholy eyes and a face expressive of the utmost concern, stood M. Isidore, handsome as ever. She looked up with a little cry, and dashed the tears from her face; but, before English lips could frame a syllable, an overwhelming torrent of eloquent French apology broke forth from the gallant Gaul, sweeping everything before it in its rushing course. That he should have been the innocent and unwitting cause of insult and inconvenience to Madame broke his heart and drove him to distraction, she heard. He was ready to do anything in expiation and amendment; if, indeed, any were possible; she might command him; he was there, at her service absolutely. Did she wish apartments, pension, anything, elsewhere? He would fly to the ends of the earth to secure them; he would telegraph north, south, east, and west; let her but name her locality, her terms, and her aspect, they should be hers. She could, of course, not remain an hour under that roof after such an insult. What broke his heart most severely and drove him to uttermost distraction and maddest desire to slay himself, was the thought of Madame's invariable and continuous kindness to himself. At this a deepening crimson obliged Madame to spread a damp and flimsy wisp of handkerchief over as much of her face as circumstances permitted, attempting some faint murmurs of deprecation; she had only been decently civil, as to others. How he should have fared in the agonizing vicissitudes by which his bosom had been so cruelly furrowed and torn, without the unvarying sympathy and counsel Madame was good enough to extend to him, M. Isidore shuddered to think. Enough; she had saved him, she had recalled him to manhood and enabled him to endure, even to hope. In return for this she had suffered outrage, insult, desecration, from a breast of granite, from the impure rage of a hyena heart. She had been involved in the persecutions and maledictions of a ferocious fate that had blasted and blighted him from earliest youth--he looked about eighteen as he