strangely deep voice of hers, with its effect of immense solemnity.

"No, poor dear," said John, with pathos, "no, I have made no dinner."

"But you have eaten a great deal," exclaimed Annunziata, frowning, nonplussed. "And you are still eating."

"Quite so," responded John, "though I think it's perhaps the merest trifle unhandsome of you to fling it in my face. I have eaten a great deal, and I am still eating. That is what I come to table for. In an orderly life like mine there is a place for everything. I come to table to eat, just as I go to bed to sleep and to church to say my prayers. Would you have me sleep at table, eat in church, and say my prayers in bed? Eating, however, has nothing to do with the case. I spoke of dining—I said I had not dined. Now you shall be the judge. The question is, can a Christian man dine twice on the same day? Answer me that."

"Oh, no," answered Annunziata, her pale face very sober, and she lengthened out her vowels in deprecation of the idea. "At least, it would be gluttony if he did."

"There you are," cried John. "And gluttony is not the undeadliest of the Seven Deadly Sins. So, then, unless you would have me guilty of the deadly sin of gluttony, you must agree that I have not dined. For I am going to dine this evening. I am going to dine at the Hotel Victoria at Roccadoro. I am going to dine with a lady. I am going to dine in all the pomp and circumstance of my dress-suit, with a white tie and pumps. And you yourself have said it, a Christian man may not, without guilt of gluttony, dine twice on the same day. Therefore it is the height of uncharitableness, it's a deliberate imputation of sin, to contend that I have dined already."

Annunziata followed his reasoning thoughtfully, and then gravely set him right.

"No," she said, with a drop of the eyelids and a quick little shake of the head, "you do not understand. I will explain." Her eyes were wide open again, and bright with zeal for his instruction. "You have dined already. That is a certain truth, because this meal is dinner, and you have eaten it. But to-night you are going to a dinner of ceremony—and that is different. A dinner of ceremony does not count. It is the same as a supper. My uncle himself once went to a dinner of ceremony at Bergamo. No, it will not be gluttony for you to go to a dinner of ceremony."

"You speak like a little pope," said John, with enthusiasm. "In matters of Faith and 

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