"Sit down," he said. "I have something to say to you."

She sat down, and a peculiar expression, almost a crafty one, came into her face.

"You have told me a little of your life," he said. "Let me tell you something of mine."

She smiled again. These big children called men were almost to be pitied. She had expected a fight, but the man had thrown up the sponge from the outset, and now he was going to give himself into her hands.

Only for that pathetic look in his eyes and that searching tone in his voice she could have found it in her heart to laugh.

She let her cape drop back from her shoulders, revealing her round bust and swanlike arms, and crossing one leg over the other she displayed the edge of a lace skirt and the point of a red slipper. Then she coughed a little behind a perfumed lace handkerchief and prepared to listen.

"You are the daughter of an ancient family," he said, "older than the house it lived in, and prouder than a line of kings. And whatever sorrows you may have seen, you knew what it was to have a mother who nursed you and a father who loved you, and a home that was your own. Can you realise what it is to have known neither father nor mother, to be homeless, nameless, and alone?"

She looked up--a deep furrow had crossed his brow, which she had not seen there before.

"Happy the child," he said, "though shame stands beside his cradle, who has one heart beating for him in a cruel world. That was not my case. I never knew my mother."

The mocking fire had died out of Roma's face, and she uncrossed her knees.

"My mother was the victim of a heartless man and a cruel law. She tied to her baby's wrist a paper on which she had written its father's name, placed it in the rota at the Foundling of Santo Spirito, and flung herself into the Tiber."

Roma drew the cape over her shoulders.

"She lies in an unnamed pauper's grave in the Campo Verano."

"_Your_ mother?"

"Yes. My earliest memory is of being put out to nurse at a farmstead in the Campagna. It was the time of revolution; the treasury of the Pope was not yet replaced by the treasury of the King, the nuns at Santo Spirito had no money with which to pay their pensions; and I was like a child forsaken by its own, a fledgling in a foreign nest."

"Oh!"

"Those were the days when scoundrels established abroad traded in the white slavery of poor Italian boys. They scoured the country, gathered them up, put them in railway trucks like cattle, and despatched them to foreign countries. My foster-parents parted with me for money, and I was sent to London."

Roma's bosom was heaving, and tears were gathering in her eyes.

"My next memory is of living in a large half-empty house in Soho--fifty foreign boys crowded together. The big ones were sent out into the streets with an organ, the little ones with a squirrel or a cage of white mice. We had a cup of tea and a piece of bread for breakfast, and were forbidden to return home until we had earned our supper. Then--then the winter days and nights in the cold northern climate, and the little southern boys with their organs and squirrels, shivering and starving in the darkness and the snow."

Roma's eyes were filling frankly, and she was allowing the tears to flow.

"Thank God, I have another memory," he continued. "It is of a good man, a saint among men, an Italian refugee, giving his life to the poor, especially to the poor of his own people."

Roma's labouring breath seemed to be arrested at that moment.

"On several occasions he brought their masters to justice in the English courts, until, finding they were watched, they gradually became less cruel. He opened his house to the poor little fellows, and they came for light and warmth between nine and ten at night, bringing their organs with them. He taught them to read, and on Sunday evenings he talked to them of the lives of the great men of their country. He is dead, but his spirit is alive--alive in the souls he made to live."

Roma's eyes were blinded with the tears that sprang to them, and her throat was choking, but she said:

"What was he?"

"A doctor."

"What was his name?"

David Rossi passed his hand over the furrow in his forehead, and answered:

"They called him Joseph Roselli."

Roma half rose from her seat, then sank back, and the lace handkerchief dropped from her hand.

"But I heard afterwards--long afterwards--that he was a Roman noble, one of the fearless few who had taken up poverty and exile and an unknown name for the sake of liberty and justice."

Roma's head had fallen into her bosom, which was heaving with an emotion she could not conceal.

"One day a letter came from Italy, telling him that a thousand men were waiting for him to lead them in an insurrection that was to dethrone an unrighteous king. It was the trick of a scoundrel who has since been paid the price of a hero's blood. I heard of this only lately--only to-night."

There was silence for a moment. David Rossi had put one arm over his eyes.

"Well?"

"He was enticed back from England to Italy; an English minister violated his correspondence with a friend, and communicated its contents to the Italian Government; he was betrayed into the hands of the police, and deported without trial."

"Was he never heard of again?"

"Once--only once--by the friend I speak about."

Roma felt dizzy, as if she were coming near to some deep places; but she could not stop--something compelled her to go on.

"Who was the friend?" she asked.

"One of his poor waifs--a boy who owed everything to him, and loved and revered him as a father--loves and reveres him still, and tries to follow in the path he trod."

"What--what was his name?"

"David Leone."

She looked at him for a moment without being able to speak. Then she said:

"What happened to him?"

"The Italian courts condemned him to death, and the English police drove him from England."

"Then he has never been able to return to his own country?"

"He has never been able to visit his mother's grave except by secret and at night, and as one who was perpetrating a crime."

"What became of him?"

"He went to America."