There was a book of photographs on the table that Frederick Fairfax and his wife had collected during their wedding-tour on the Continent.  It was during the early days of the art, and the pictures were as blurred and faded as their lives had since become.  Bessie was turning them over with languid interest, when her grandfather, perceiving how she was employed, said he could show her some foreign views that would please her better than those dim photographs.  He unlocked a drawer in the writing-table and produced half a dozen little sketch-books, his own and his sister Dorothy’s during their frequent travels together.  It seemed that their practice had been to make an annual tour.

While Bessie examined the contents of the sketch-books, her grandfather stood behind her looking over her shoulder, and now and then saying a few words in explanation, though most of the scenes were named and dated.  They were water-color drawings—­bits of landscape, picturesque buildings, grotesque and quaint figures, odd incidents of foreign life, all touched with tender humor, and evidently by a strong and skilful hand; and flowers, singly or in groups, full of a delicate fancy.  In the last volume of the series there were no more flowers; the scenes were of snow-peaks and green hills, of wonderful lake-water, and boats with awnings like the hood of a tilted cart; and the sky was that of Italy.

“Oh, these are lovely, but why are there no more flowers?” said Bessie thoughtlessly.

“Dorothy had given up going out then,” said her grandfather in a low, strained voice.

Bessie caught her breath as she turned the next page, and came on a roughly washed-in mound of earth under an old wall where a white cross was set.  A sudden mist clouded her sight, and then a tear fell on the paper.

“That is where she was buried—­at Bellagio on Lake Como,” said Mr. Fairfax, and moved away.

Bessie continued to gaze at the closing page for several minutes without seeing it; then she turned back the leaves preceding, and read them again, as it were, in the sad light of the end.  It was half a feint to hide or overcome her emotion, for her imagination had figured to her that last mournful journey.  Her grandfather saw how she was affected—­saw the trembling of her hand as she paused upon the sketches and the furtive winking away of her tears.  Dear Bessie! smiles and tears were so easy to her yet.  If she had dared to yield to a natural impulse, she would have shut the melancholy record and have run to comfort him—­would have clasped her hands round his arm and laid her cheek against his shoulder, and have said, “Oh, poor grandpapa!” with most genuine pity and sympathy.  But he stood upon the hearth with his back to the fire, erect, stiff as a ramrod, with gloom in his eyes and lips compressed, and anything in the way of a caress would probably have amazed more than it would have flattered him.  Bessie therefore refrained herself, and for ever so long there was silence in the room, except for the ticking of the clock on the chimney-piece and the occasional dropping of the ashes from the bars.  At last she left looking at the sketches and mechanically reverted to the photographs upon which Mr. Fairfax came out of his reverie and spoke again.  She was weary, but the evening was now almost over.