“Have you told ’Tista anything?”

“About this?  Nothing.  I thought I would wait until I knew—­”

She had risen from her seat to greet him, with painful agitation; and now she staggered, and I think would have fallen, but that the old man timely caught and held her in his gentle grasp.

“Be comforted, dear ’Lora,” he whispered; " bring you good news.”

She dropped into her wooden chair and covered her face with her bloodless hands, weeping and sobbing for joy, as only women can who have suffered much and long and alone.

Herr Ritter stood by, watching her kindly, and stroking his white flowing beard in silence, until she had wept her fill; and her dark blissful eyes, dreamy with the mist of fallen tears, were lifted again to his face, like caverned pools in summer refreshed with a happy rain.

“What did she say? she sent me a note? a message?”

Herr Ritter poured his pistoles into her lap.

“I bring you these,” said he, simply.

“Jesu-Maria!  She sent me all this! how good! how generous! but ought I to take it, Herr?”

“It is for ’Tista; to pay his apprenticeship.  But there is a condition, dear Frau; ’Tista is not to know who sends him this gift.  He is to be told it comes from an unknown friend.  When he is older he will know, perhaps.”

“My kind dear ’Lotta!  Ah, she would have ’Tista learn to love her, then, before she tells him of her goodness!  For him I cannot refuse the money; can I, Herr?  But I may go and thank her myself; I may go and thank her?”

“Not just yet, ’Lora.  Your sister is obliged to leave this place tomorrow morning; Signor Nero’s engagements compel him to proceed; and so for the present time she charged me to bear you with the gift, her greeting, and her farewell.”

He was looking at her with grave mild eyes, while he leant against the cottage-wall and stroked his silver beard.

Daughter of earth, let God be judge; for He alone understands the heart of mortal man.  As for me, I am only a flower of the dust of the ground, yet I confess I thought the deceit the old philosopher used, at least more graceful and gentle than the candour of Carlotta Nero.

“’Lora:  you are happy now?”

She looked up and smiled in his eyes.

In that smile the philosopher had his reward.

Soon afterwards Battista Delcor was apprenticed to a chemist in the town, and the cup of his content was filled to the brim; but as yet, neither his mother nor Herr Ritter told him the name of his unknown friend.  Then it grew towards the end of summer, and the ferns and the brake began to tarnish in the woodlands, and Dolores Delcor sickened, and failed, and whitened more and more from day to day, till at last she could do no work at all, but lived only at the hands of ’Tista and Herr Ritter.

As for me, I blossomed still in the balcony beneath the green verandah, looking always into the dark studio, and noting how, one by one, the tall musty books upon the old German’s shelves were bartered away for gold.