"But then why won't you tell me?"

"I cannot tell you because I do not know," said Don Ambrogio.

"Oh, I see," said John. "And yet," he argued meditatively, "that's hard to conceive. I don't for a moment mean that I doubt it—but it's hard to conceive, like the atomic theory, and some of the articles of religion. (I hear, by-the-by, that the scientists are throwing the atomic theory over. Oh, fickle scientists! Oh, shifting sands of science!) Surely there can't be many such tall slender forms, in diaphanous garments, appearing and disappearing here and there in your parish? And one would suppose, antecedently, that you'd know them all."

"A peasant, a villager," said Don Ambrogio.

"I put it to you as an observer of life," said John, "do peasants, do villagers, wear diaphanous garments?"

"A visitor, a sight-seer, from some place on the lake," said Don Ambrogio.

"I put it to you as a student of probabilities," said John, "would a visitor, would a sight-seer, from some place on the lake, walk in the garden of the castle without a hat? And would she appear at Sant' Alessina on two days in succession?"

But Don Ambrogio had finished his veal, and when he had finished his veal he always left the table, first twice devoutly making the sign of the Cross, and then with a bow to John, pronouncing the formula, "You will graciously permit? My affairs call me. A thousand regrets." To-day he slightly amplified that formula. "A thousand regrets," he said, "and as many excuses for my inability to afford the information desired."

After his departure, John turned to Annunziata, where, in her grey cotton pinafore, her lips parted, her big eyes two lively points of interrogation, she sat opposite to him, impatient to take up the theme.

"Well, Mistress Wisdom!" he saluted her, smiling, and waving his hand. "It is a good and wholesome thing for the young to witness the discomfiture of the wicked. Your uncle retreats with flying colours. He made, to be sure, a slender dinner, but that's his daily habit. If you have tears to shed, shed them for me. I have made none at all."

From points of interrogation, Annunziata's eyes changed to abysses of wonder, and, big as they were, seemed to grow measurably bigger.

"You have made no dinner?" she protested, in that 

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