that one full of bad tidings would come, and every one knows that
such a state of mind as this is serious. Now, when Assunta found
her one morning, pacing the long, frescoed hall, by the side of
the running water, and put a whole sheaf of letters into her
hand, Daphne looked at them cautiously, and started to open one,
then lost her courage and held them for a while to get used to
them. Finally she went upstairs and changed her dress, putting on
her short skirt and red felt hat, and walked out into the highway
with Hermes skipping after her. She walked rapidly up the even
way, under the high stone walls green with overhanging ivy and
wistaria vines, and the lamb kept pace with her with his gay
gallop, broken now and then by a sidelong leap of sheer joy up
into the air. Presently she found a turning that she had not
known before, marked by a little wayside shrine, and taking it,
followed a narrow grass-grown road that curled about the side of
a hill.

She read her father's letter first, walking slowly and smiling.
If he were only here to share this wide beauty! Then she read
her sister's, which was full of woeful exclamations and bad news.
The sick man was slowly dying, and they could not leave him.
Meanwhile she was desolated by thinking of her little sister. Of
course she was safe, for Giacomo and Assunta were more
trustworthy than the Italian government, but it must be very
stupid, and she had meant to give Daphne such a gay time at the
villa. She would write at once to some English friends at Lake
Scala, ten miles away, to see if they could not do something to
relieve her sister's solitude.

"To relieve my solitude!" gasped Daphne. "Oh I am so afraid