and leaned back in dreamy languor to enjoy the magnificence of the landscape and to breathe in the scent of iris and cyclamen that was wafted to her on the soft breeze. Upon the third finger of her left hand she wore a ring of hammered gold. It looked bright and new, but in reality was two thousand years old.

She had heard that her mother was improving, had written home that her own plans had all been changed; she had found a far better and delightful position as companion to a Signora Belmonte, and was spending the summer in a castle in the Apennines.

In this mental security and bodily ease she had given herself up to the trancelike enjoyment of the present; let the future take care of itself, this was the heydey of youth, and she was a worshipper at Love's altar. She heard a glad shout, and looked up to see a young man breaking through the tall hedge that inclosed the gardens below. He wore a dark green hunting suit and high russet boots. The glow of health was in his face and the light of happiness in his eyes, as he waved to her, calling her by name. The book fell upon the grass, and she ran to

meet him.

He took her in his arms and held her in a close and long embrace. Have you missed me, diletto mio? "*he asked, as they sat on the marble seat together. "Do you know, it is the first time we have been parted for more than an hour?

They were supremely happy. Their lives were simple and natural, almost poetical and apparently without scruple. So far" the way of the transgressor" had not been "hard."

They sat in the old garden in the cool of the summer afternoon, the soothing plash of the fountain behind them and the pink and white petals of an oleander tree falling gently upon them. Leone's arm was thrown lightly around his love and her head rested on his shoulder, and together they gazed over the vast stretch of mountains where, miles away to the south* My delight.

west, lay the Eternal City - Rome - where they had both known so much misery.

"How good God is," he said at length, "to have made the earth so beautiful! I think the Garden of Eden could not have been any fairer than this."

"Yes," said Margaret musingly, "and here there is no serno danger."

pent

There is the bottomless well," he said.

"What is that," she asked; "where is it not here in the garden?"

"No, it is over there," and he pointed in the direction of the fallen tower. "It is a dangerous place; Fauvel has warned me; it is a natural reservoir so deep no one has ever been able to sound the bottom."

Is that where you have put your habit," she whispered; "have you thrown it down the well?"

"No," he answered soberly, "but I have hidden it safely." "Show me where?"

Hand in hand they left the restful shades of the garden, mounted the steps of the terrace to a door that opened upon it, and passed under the portal of the place that had so strangely become their home.

When Rocca Serrata was a princely dwelling, as well as a mighty fortress during intervals of peace, its lords had bidden the artists of Florence and Perugia to enrich and beautify it. Now it was almost dismantled, stripped of all its paintings and many of its tapestries, its frescoes dim, and its marbles stained and broken; but with it all there remained a stately beauty that seemed to gain rather than lose by the touch of Time.

After going up a broad stair and crossing the covered gallery of a small inner court which joined the main building to its northern flank, Leone stopped before an imposing door; he pushed it with his foot and it swung in, leading down several steps into a sort of ante-room which looked as if it might be

the entrance to other apartments. It was empty with the exception of a long wooden chest, rudely carved, and beside it, as if guarding its hidden treasures, stood a suit of ancient armor. Opposite the entrance hung a large panel of ragged tapestry in which horsemen with lances and spears were barely discernible. "It is here," Leone said.

"Here? Where?"

"In this," he replied, touching the armor.

Inside of that?" she asked; when did you put it there?" "The day after you came. Fauvel told me to hide it. 'There are plenty of deserted rooms and safe hiding places, go and find one,' he said, and I found this; I stuffed the habit inside this old fellow. No one would ever suspect it was there. Don't you think it a fine place, Margherita?"

"No," she said critically, "I do not. Fauvel says he often allows people to come here-writers, artists, antiquarians — and they go through the castle and poke into everything, and any one interested in old armor would take this apart in no time, and if they should find a monk's habit inside, it would look exactly as if it were purposely hidden, quickly and secretly, don't you see? Let us put it in this chest, and then if it should be found nothing much would be thought of it; it might have lain there for a hundred years, who could tell; your habits do not change their style, do they?

"No," he said, "they have remained the same since the day of St. Francis in the 13th century."

"Very well, then, if ever discovered, one would naturally suppose it belonged to some monk who once lived here. Don't you think so? Come, let us try to open the chest; see, the key is in it."

He knelt, and after a moment's tugging at the lock, it yielded and they lifted the lid together. "Now," said Margaret, give it to me." He began to remove the habit from the different parts of the armor where he had hastily thrust it. The brown cloth was streaked with rust and dust, which she wiped

off and neatly folding it, piece by piece, laid it carefully in the chest the robe, the cape, the hood, the sandals, the coarse socks, and then the knotted white cords and the long Rosary, he standing by and watching her.

"The door," she said cautiously; "you had better stay there and keep guard."

"No one ever comes here; this is the north wing that ends in the ruined tower. It's considered unsafe, and has a bad name besides. They tell tales in the village about it, Fauvel says, and the servants are afraid that's why I chose it. Down It might have been better to

below is the old well I spoke of. have thrown it in the well, after all; our secret would have been safer."

"You could never get it again," she said.

She paused in her work, holding the small black cap in her hand, the last article that completed the monk's dress and which she was just about to lay away with the rest. "You might want to put it on again some day."

"Never, never, Margherita. Why do you say such things?"

"You might cease to love me."

Ah, you do not understand my love for you; it is deathless," he declared vehemently. "All I fear is that you might grow weary of me, and then, even then, I would have no use for it, for I would throw myself into the well if that day should come."

"That day will never come, Leone dearest; never, never. Let us shut it up quickly; it is safe here, and we will forget it."

This had not been a pleasant quarter of an hour for Margaret. The same troublesome voice that used to worry her in Rome was making itself heard again, and the youth at her side in his manly beauty had such a short time since been that sweetfaced young monk, and she she was the cause of his casting off this habit that they were now hurrying to conceal like a murdered corpse. Close it quick and let us go," she said.

He shut down the lid, turned the key in the lock and took

her in his arms.

"How cold you are, amore," he said; "why, you are trembling!"

"I am nervous," she answered; "let us go."

"I should not have brought you here to this lonely, dark room," he said tenderly, as he led her from it, "but there is nothing to be afraid of, carissima, it is only the foolish talk of peasants telling tales of this part of the castle."

"Oh, it is not ghosts, or silly stories that I fear."

66 What then?"

66

God," she whispered; we cannot hide it from Him."

"No, no, Margherita," he said confidently. "God is not angry with us. He is a God of Love, not a God of Vengeance, or of Fear. That is what Fauvel believes, and he says the keeping, not the breaking, of such vows is the sin, and I believe it now also. God is our loving Father, and He wishes His children to be happy, and we are happy is it not so? Have no fear, Margherita mia, we will go back to the garden; but first I must put away this key."

Retracing their steps through the tortuous windings of the great house, they turned at length into a light and airy corridor where the frescoes of the Zodiac told her that it led to their own quarters, which they soon reached. Leone, for the name Estori was never spoken now, passed into his bed chamber and hid the key of the chest behind the frame of a picture.

These rooms, with their lofty ceilings and great gilt cornices, their four-post baldacchino beds, and the silk rotting upon the panels of the walls, in former times were known as the state apartments. Now they were occupied by the Belmontes, and it was odd to see the evidences of twentieth-century wearing apparel and toilet articles, amidst these by-gone splendors.

While Leone was concealing the key Margaret stood before Canopy.