'Eh, little one, and who asked your opinion? Little girls should be seen, you know, seen and not heard of—not heard of,' said the old man in a voice of affected rebuke. He put out his hand, and the child came up to him instantly, nestling against his shoulder, and rubbing her thin little cheek on the rough sleeve of his coat. 'I don't mind, I'm not afraid, if you do make a noise,' she said softly in his ear.

'Nay, nay, child. But you should mind. Little girls must mind what is going on about them, else how are they ever to learn their manners before they grow up?' said Sor Drea, still in an admonitory tone, but patting the little face near him as he spoke with a smile which the child understood better than his words. And then he looked about him, 'Well, Dino—Italia, my girl!—and how about our supper? are we not ready for that birthday supper yet?' he said aloud.

Italia had moved away, and was standing beside the window. She was perfectly aware that Dino had followed her there, but some sudden new shyness kept her silent and wondering at herself. She had pushed back the scanty curtain, and stood leaning her forehead against the coolness of the window-pane. Outside all was darkness, and one heard the sound of the breaking waves. It was a rough night, she thought to herself: and tried to say it, but somehow she could not speak: the words stuck in her throat, and would not frame themselves. In that singular moment she seemed to be leading a double life;—the old existence was there, the old safe habit of home and her father's voice heard beside the fire; and here—here was something different, an unknown feeling of oppression—an anguish of self-consciousness, pierced with sudden flashes of a new unfamiliar joy. And yet this was only Dino, whom she had known all her life; Dino, her old tyrant and protector and playfellow——

'You are not angry now? My father did not mean all that he said; he did not mean to be unkind—to you,' she said abruptly, turning her face still farther away and looking out into the blackness.

There was no answer for a moment, and her heart began to beat faster.

'It is—it is a very rough night,' she said in a still lower voice, the words forcing themselves out at last. And then she turned her head slowly towards him.

She did not lift her eyes to his face, but she was aware that he moved. He had been leaning one arm against the window-frame; her own hands were clasped together and resting upon the ledge. She saw him move his arm—and felt the warm pressure of a strong hand laid upon both of hers. She stood quite still, breathing very softly.

'Italia!'

He was gazing at her with all his soul in his eyes—with a transfigured face which she had never seen before—he spoke in a new voice. 'Italia!' Was it a prayer—a command? The girl shivered from head to foot. She turned very pale, and then, slowly, she lifted up her glorious eyes full of a new resplendent light of joy, and they stood silent for a long, long moment, gazing at one another with the full, serious inquiring look of familiar souls new met in some strange heaven.

'Italia!' said her father's voice again, and she turned to him at once with a simultaneous movement of her whole being. These last moments were not a thing to be thought of now; she put them entirely on one side with a feeling of definite possession; it was something to be remembered and realised later on, when she was alone. She went up now to her father and laid her little hands upon his shoulder caressingly, with something of the sensation of having returned to him from afar. Her face was a little pale perhaps, but she smiled, and no one noticed her paleness. It is the way with the great crises of our mental experience: they pass us by in silence. Angels visit us for good or ill; the shadows of night gather deeper, or our dawn grows red with promise—and nothing has taken place which was noticeable even to very affectionate eyes. It is not all insensibility in the lookers-on. At every marriage procession, as at every funeral, there must be some person present whose chief interest lies in the trappings—in the workman-like manner in which the wheels go around a corner, and how the horses carry their heads. And life teaches that, as it teaches patience.

It was some time before anything more was said concerning Dino's prospects. When a man's daily food is the measure of his degree of success in the world, conversation at table means chiefly an interruption. So that it was some time before old Drea pushed away his plate and drew his glass nearer, rubbing the back of one hand across his lips with a deep-drawn breath of satisfaction, while with the other he fumbled in his pocket for his pipe. It was only a small flask of cheap thin country wine which stood upon the table before him, but he passed it over to Dino with an air of simple satisfaction and pride, a cordial and affectionate pleasure in his own hospitality, which might well have softened a harsher beverage.

'Drink, lad. Don't stint yourself. Wine was made for drinking. Lord, 'tis one more reason for not being a woman. Look at Italia there. You'd think an old sailor's daughter would know better than to care for any water that isn't salt-water, eh, boy? And Sora Lucia, too, sip, sipping, with her head on one side like a fly. But there, she is not to be laughed at, for a pluckier little woman—— Lord, how she did fight that wind! You didn't well know which of you was running away with the other, eh, Lucia? Well, well, after all, a fly kicks as hard as it can——'

'Did Lucia kick? I should have liked to see her,' said the child Palmira, looking up. A smile like her brother's smile lit up with a sudden brightness her pale, small face.

'Indeed, Sor Drea was far too busy thinking of his boat—he knows nothing about what I did,' the little dressmaker retorted briskly, with a toss of her head, which made the black beads glisten. Her face, too, was warmed and dilated by the sense of plenty about her—the wine and fire and supper. Her black eyes shone demurely, the hollow cheeks were flushed, she had lost for the moment something of her habitual air of suppression—an air of decent disappointment with life.

The old man laughed good-humouredly. 'Hark to her—hark to the child, will you? Ay, quick and sharp, and down on you before you know where you are. She's her mother's own daughter—in all but looks. She was always a tall girl, was Catarina, and a step and an eye like a queen, an eye that went through you. But never you mind, Lucia; 'tis better to be the head of an eel than the tail of the biggest sturgeon, to my way of thinking. Ay, do your best in this world as you find it, and if any one else can do better, why, let 'em show you how 'tis done. That's my way of thinking. And now——' he leaned back, thrusting both hands into his trousers pockets and shifting his pipe to the other corner of his mouth. 'And now about this business of yours, lad?'

Dino looked up with a start from his occupation of drawing patterns upon the table with a little heap of breadcrumbs. 'I wanted to ask your advice about that,' he began doubtfully.

'Well, ask it. Advice costs no headache, boy. You may borrow another man's compass to steer by even when he can't lend you the wind. Stop a bit, though. We'll begin with the beginning, by your leave.' His face, which time and exposure to the weather had so stiffened and tanned that it had grown well-nigh impossible to detect any of the slighter changes of expression upon it, his face looked as rigid and impassive as a piece of wood. 'It's really all over with you now at your office? no chance of making it up again with the masters? they wouldn't take you back again, eh?'

'Why, as for that,' said Dino hastily, 'I would not go back if they all came here together, in a body, to ask me.' He looked across the table at Italia. 'I am an eel's head too, sir,—like Lucia there,' he said smiling. 'I've been a sturgeon's tail long enough. I'm tired of being wagged when I'd