On the Bright Shore
Thus speaking, she caught his hand and bent her head as if to kiss it; but he withdrew the hand quickly; anxious to drive away ceremony at the earliest, and break the ice of first acquaintance, he turned to Panna Maria, and, shaking his finger at her, said, with the freedom of an old acquaintance,—
"Ah, this little girl has let out the secret!"
Panna Maria smiled at him in answer, a little sadly, a little perplexed. She seemed to him fair, more beautiful than in the studio. He noticed also that she had around her neck a narrow, lily-colored ribbon which she had not worn before; and this touched him still more as a proof that evidently she did not consider him an old grandfather, since she had dressed for him. Then Pani Cervi said,—
"Yes, Maria told everything. God watched over her and over us, so that she met such a man as you."
"Panna Maria told me of the difficult circumstances in which you are living," an-
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