to get one glimpse of her while the morning lasted,--to make acquaintance with her,--to familiarise himself with her looks and her ways. But when Laurie reached the Square he found, alas! that he was not the only one who had been moved to visit the padrona in the early sunshine. Miss Hadley was there putting the finishing touches to the room; and so was Mrs. Suffolk, leaning back in the Louis Quinze chair, laughing and crying and chattering to the children in the picture as if they had been real babies. ‘Oh, you darlings!’ the little woman was saying, ‘I wonder how many people will go on their knees to you when you are out in the world. But though you are little angels, you are not so nice as your mother. You are sweet, but not so sweet as our padrona.’ This was the chatter Laurie heard as he went in. And it gave him a shock which it would be impossible to describe, when the padrona herself turned round upon him, palette in hand, smiling and placid and gracious, the very same woman from whom he had parted yesterday. All the heat and agitation of suppressed passion might be in his eyes, but in hers there was only the brightness of every day,--the composure of her usual, ordinary looks. Nay, as if to emphasize more and more the perfect unity, so far as she was concerned, of to-day and yesterday, she turned to him with the very words which, when he left that room last, before heaven and earth had changed for him, he had fancied her using. ‘Here comes the lob of spirits,’ said the padrona, ‘and his bowl of cream has not been placed for him as it ought to have been. Here is Robin Goodfellow, who does his friends’ work, and never asks even to be praised for it. Where were you that you never came near us all the night?’ ‘Where was I?’ said Laurie. He was too much agitated to tune himself immediately to the key of his present companions. Fortunately Miss Hadley was busy arranging his lilies of the valley, and Mrs. Suffolk, who had sprung up to take him by both his hands, was not sharp-sighted. He looked over the little woman’s shoulder with dilated eyes, which looked to the padrona as if he had been up all night, or in some trouble. ‘I will tell you another time where I was,’ Laurie said, with a voice full of tender meaning. The padrona gazed at him with wonder unfeigned. ‘The boy has got into some scrape,’ she said to herself. And then both the women plunged without drawing breath into the story of the Angles and Mr. Rich, and Suffolk’s sudden and unhopedfor success. ‘We had given up thinking of it even,’ Mrs. Suffolk cried. ‘I did hope if the Saxon Maiden got a good place at the Academy----but I never even hoped for the Angles. Call him the lubber-fiend! when he rushed up to poor Reginald yesterday, and made him put on his good coat, and did everything for him, he was more like our guardian angel.’