would like to hear in what way her recent fears and troubles | am to sit to him for the first time this very day, after dinner, an had ended so happily. Then she told him.

and as he did so, happened to glance at the usually voluble | leave off working. Then one of them awakens Tota, who is Tota, who had sat during the whole time knitting in perfect silence. At this moment she cast on Nanna an odd look, to which Sandford could give no name, but which startled him. Was it amusement, contempt, triumph, or pity? Or, did it change and flutter in that instant of time, between all those hues of expression? But as she caught Sandford's eye, they all vanished from her handsome face, which resumed its usual stolidity.

fast asleep on the floor in a dark corner. She gets up and stretches herself; then crossing the room lazily toward the slumbering girl, wraps about her the dark red stuff on which she lies, lifts her easily in her strong arms, and carries her out at the door, which one of the artists holds wide. He goes upstairs before them with a hand-lamp, and the key of Tota's room-door, which he opens to admit the woman and her burden, and returns to his comrades below.

The first séance of the Sleeping Nymph is over.

In the morning Nanna awoke, feeling strangely sick and heavy. She was dull in spite of herself, and, from no cause that she could discover, was tingling with nervous irritation. However, toward evening she recovered, and next day was as

Jealousy appeared to account for Tota's unusual demeanor. well as ever. Was the feeling real or affected?"

She sat to Wilton every afternoon. He worked at a charming

"Do not be cross with me, my Tota," cried little Nanna; portrait of her, which in its progress so thoroughly instructed "here I come."

As she tripped, singing, down the five or six flight of stairs that led to the house-door, her sweet, shrill voice floated back to Sandford, now clear, now faint, like a bird that flits away warbling from branch to brauch. She improvised, as these Italians so often do, thinking aloud in music. Something like this doggerel she sang:

"I am so gay, so gay!

And the English Signori are good!
Morning and night I'll pray

For that English Signor so good;
To the Madonna I'll pray,

For the Handsome-Tall, so good."

CHAPTER III.

IT is four hours of the night; that is to say, at this time of year, about ten o'clock. A man walks swiftly down the Via Sabina, a street neighboring the Piazza di Trevi, and knocks at the door of one of the large shabby houses there. The latch clicks, and entering, he finds his way up the dark stairs. On the landing-place of the second floor waits a woman holding a little hand-lamp, by whose dim light they can barely discern each other's presence. She challenges him in a low voice. In a whisper he answers:

"La Ninfa Dormiente!"

She opens noiselessly the door of a back room, letting out a sudden glare of light which illumines for a moment the faces of Tota and one of those four French painters who fraternize with Wilton.

him in every line of her gracious head that he was able to devote the night séances to making studies of her lovely form. These night séances continued to take place about twice a week for a month, and then ceased, their object being accomplished.

Nanna, whose health had been considerably affected by the | frequent abuse of opiates (mixed by Tota in her poor little supper-glass of wine and water), revived almost as soon as they were discontinued; her vigorous constitution quickly throwing off the poison she had imbibed. She was prettier and sweeter than ever, and most dutiously anxious to obtain honest money for her father. Her gratitude had been proportioned to her surprise on finding him quite patient and lenient, while illness had made her often incapable of accepting employment as a model.

WINTER is past, Carnival is past, Lent is past; spring has alighted on the seven hills. Not poised a-tiptoe as in the north, chilled and repelled by the ungrateful soil-the messenger of glad tidings runs on beautiful feet right into the heart of gray Rome, and even the sunless alleys wear a faint smile of flowers. Through the solemn ruined world outside, she comes dancing and singing, and it bursts into great laughters of bloom.

On a fine spring morning, numbers of persons of all conditions were flocking to the Villa Medici. It was the first day of the annual exposition of painting and sculpture, done by the French art-students who inhabit there. As usual in such exhibitions, there was a favorite picture among the many that worthily covered the walls; and, as usual also, a dense little mob was always in front of it. Outsiders, dodging and peering between and over and under the close-packed heads and shoulders, were aggravated by the comments of critics, and tantalized by the

They pass in, and the door closes on them. Pass in also: it raptures of enthusiasts. is a strange scene.

A large room, roughly but conveniently fitted up as a painter's studio, and comfortably warmed by a stove. One portion of it is brilliantly lighted by a cluster of lamps that hung from a cross-beam of the lofty ceiling. There is a profound silence. Four men, of whom Wilton is one, glance up, and nod to the last comer. They are seated in front of a model-stand, all intently drawing the same subject.

That subject is a beautiful nude model. A young girl lies in a deep sleep, on the raised platform, in the full light of the lamps. The soft and gleaming curves of her perfect body, the sweet flush of slumber on her childish cheek, the clear, delicate relievo of her small Greek face, are thrown out by a deep red stuff laid over the mattress and pillow which are placed on the model-stand, and by a large dark-colored curtain or screen, disposed behind her. Divested as she is of all covering but her loosened and abundant deep-brown locks, all veined with gold where they catch the lamplight on their waves, there is yet about her an exquisite innocence and chastity that seem in themselves to clothe the lovely child.

Poor litle Nanna lies there exposed to profane eyes, helpless and unconscious, wrapped in a slumber that is drugged. It is true that those five men regard her with the eyes of earnest artists, not with the insolent stare of profligacy, but not the less have they inflicted a cruel disgrace on that innocent creature.

Silently and steadily the five students sit and draw deep into the night. It is long past twelve o'clock when they reluctantly

Some visitors were satisfied to stroll down the little avenue of brilliant canvases in loggia, which, closed for the occasion, formed the chief gallery of the exposition. Among these, content to see what he inoffensively might, without indecently shoving noble ladies and gentlemen, was a handsome young artisan-our friend Felice.

He chanced to be employed in renovating the decorations of some rooms in the villa; and during his hour's leave of absence at noon, had followed the throng that came to stare about them. He was gazing on either side with childish wonder and pleasure, when he came on that crowd collected before the special attraction of the hour, all buzzing like a hive, with admiration expressed in a dozen languages. The young workman understood none but his own, nevertheless a phrase, continually repeated,

La Ninfa Dormiente," instructed him as to the name of the picture, while such exclamations as "che bella !” “una cosa superba!" "bravo bravissimo!" excited his curiosity. He waited patiently, however, till a sudden loosening, as it were, of the knot of gazers permitted him to insinuate his lithe body into the space.

But he had no sooner cast a glance at the popular picture than his brown face turned livid, and he uttered a cry of horror, staring on the fatal object with distended eyes, locked fingers, and lips drawn back from his teeth like a wild beast's. But the next minute he forced his way through those about him whose attention had been attracted by his extraordinary demeanor, and vanished. On his way out he met and horribly frightened

one of the villa servants, whose arm he clutched, putting a | of it when he came here and killed that poor girl without a ghastly face close to his, and hissing: word, as she sat and sang at her sewing by the window there. "La Ninfa Dormiente! Who, ten thousand times accursed, I was within, cooking the minestra for dinner, when he knocked, painted that picture out of hell?''

The answer was ready enough, and distinctly understood by the young workman; for, during his month's employment at Villa Medici, he had become acquainted with the name and person of "Signor Francesco" (François Laforêt), through frequently seeing him among the other students who played at bowls in the garden there.

It is time to describe this remarkable picture, which was a large one, and certainly the best in that year's exposition. Although it had a name, being distinguished as "La Nymphe Dormante," it was, in fact, only a beautiful and finished study; the literal portrait, life-size, of a perfectly nude young girl, lying asleep on a bit of dark-red drapery. But none who had seen the pretty model, Nanna Neri, could fail to recognize her on this canvas.

As for Felice, how can I describe those furious passions which filled the poor boy's heart and head with fire when he discovered the treachery that looked as certain as the disgrace of his dear little sweetheart? It was said that he howled with pain, as he ran through the streets on his headlong, fatal way to Tota's lodging.

and the miserable child pulled up the latch, and he rushed in. I heard Nanna scream once, but she had no time to explain anything. When I came running he was gone, and she was dead in her blood on the floor yonder. Signor Carlo, I have put my table over the place, that I may not fancy I see the thing still.”

never

"Has he been heard of since?" asked Wilton, with a groan. "I know nothing about it," returned Tota, irritably; since have I dared to stir across my threshold; however, some one in the house this morning told me that he was seen in Trastevere last night. But this I declare to you, Signor Carlo, there is everything to fear; for Antonio, the father of that unfortunate, has become silly since the thing occurred. He has taken to drinking aquavita, and his brain is burning up, and he talks, talks-our secrets run through his teeth as through a sieve; and I foresee, therefore, that certainly Felice cannot fail to learn all, sooner or later-to-morrow, to-day, this hour-who knows? And then, Signor Carlo, we are all of us no better than dead people. I tell you, I tell you, all our blood will not satisfy him!"

She almost screamed in her excitement, and broke off gasp

Socially, Rome is but a big village, and the sad village gossiping, with wide eyes of terror. upon a certain spring evening, all ran upon a crime that had been committed at noonday in the Via Sabina. That crime was the murder of a young girl.

The cruel death of that pretty, harmless child excited great indignation in Rome, where she had become very well known as a favorite and respectable model. Moreover, it soon oozed out that she was the original of Laforêt's "Sleeping Nymph," the crack picture in the French exposition, and that she had been murdered by the jealous lad with whom she was on the point of marriage. Felice had disappeared.

Winton and Sandford, and two or three other artists, had gone to Tivoli for a few days, and heard nothing of the catastrophe in Via Sabina till they returned forty-eight hours afterward. Wilton was a man of nervous temperament; he turned sick and faint when he learned the fatal result of a selfish, unscrupulous trick. I will do him the justice to say he was stricken by remorse, and not by personal fear; although he presently began to perceive that his own life, and the lives of his accomplices, might even then be at the end of Felice's knife. Yet, on reflection, he concluded that at the time he killed poor little Nanna, the lad could know very little of the truth, or he must have been aware of her absolute innocence. How much he was likely to have found out since, Wilton could not tell, and thought he might as well try to ascertain. He therefore went to see Tota, great as his repugnance was to re-enter the house she lived in.

"Are not the police on his track?" said Wilton, presently. "Police!" repeated Tota, contemptuously, and snapped her fingers.. "But," added she, "if I could tell them where to take him asleep they might not be afraid to try. Ah, per Bacco! if I only knew!''

And a savage malice lightened her great cruel eyes.

CHAPTER IV.

SEVERAL of the Roman artists were supping at the apartments of one of them-a German painter who lodged at the Quartier of S. Maria Maggiore. Neither Wilton nor Sandford were of the party. Laforêt was.

Instead of one, two, or three blows, according to the piano, there came a continuous knocking at the outer door. This being opened, one Schmidt, an invited guest, whose tardiness had just been noticed, rushed into the midst of the assemblage, and fell breathless on a chair. He was a middle-aged, blonde German, and his face, with his pale eyes, looked blue-white. He sat staring and Ach-Himmelling for a minute or two, and was then able to speak coherently. Near the house, in a very lonely little street, just as he was passing a portone with a dim lamp over it, a man had come suddenly behind him, and a knife had been struck at his heart round his shoulder. He felt himself wounded, and turned instantly on his assailant, when the man, whose cloak hid his face, exclaimed, with an oath, "Uno Sbaglio!" and vanished. There was a clear moonlight, but the shadows of the tall houses made a mere black chasm of the vicolo, and he was lost in it as suddenly as he had emerged. Schmidt, extremely disordered by his sudden encounter with death, scampered as fast as he could to friends and shelter. They crowded round him, and made him show them his

Poor Nanna had been buried the day before, and to the painter's guilty fancy that dwelling seemed filled with sepulchral silence. How often, as he climbed to his French crony's atelier, had the poor child's joyous warble, far up in the gloomy house, come flickering down those dark stairs like sunshine from some high loophole! The thought of that vivid little flame of life so violently stamped out, and of his own share in the wicked-wound. All the light summer clothing he wore had been ness, made him wince with its sharp sting.

When Tota's door was opened by the woman herself, he sat down just inside her fatal room, deadly sick again. Tota's face was very pale, and at first she seemed struck dumb by some strong emotion. It was probably personal fear, for she had instantly and carefully refastened her door behind Wilton, whose voice she had recognized before she opened to his knock.

penetrated, and a little sketch-book, with stout covers, in his
breast-pocket, was cut clean through-but. it had broken the
force of the blow, and saved his life. The hurt was nothing.
All agreed that it was a case of jealous husband or lover.
"The fellow mistook thee for his happy rival, old Schmidt,"
cried a French lad, chuckling.

"I'm afraid," said a little cockney Englishman, very

When she could speak and he could listen, she bewailed her- solemnly, in very bad French, "that he mistook Schmidt for self with a kind of spasmodic volubility. me. I have my suspicions; but I am bound in honor not to explain."

"O Dio mio, Dio mio!" she began, "who could have thought the boy would find it out? And then that Signor Francesco should expose his accursed picture there! What imprudencewhat fatality! And look you, Signor Carlo, we shall all be murdered-all, all-by that possessed of a Felice!" "Has he found out the whole truth, then?" asked Wilton, was a tangle of romantic and dangerous amours. with an effort.

There was a roar of laughter. Dicky Pratt was no only as ugly as sin ought to be, but that big Schmidt might have put him into his pocket. Dicky's morals were unexceptionable, yet, to listen to his mysterious hints, one would think his life

The next day, Wilton, in going through the Piazza di Spagna, "How can I tell, Signor Carlo? Certainly he knew nothing met Laforêt, who at once told him of Schmidt's adventure over

Now, at last, stimulated by a second murder, authority became preternaturally active. Moreover, the Master of France and Italy had not then even affected to deprive Sua Santita of his martial countenance. And while the Art College in Villa Medici bewailed its murdered graduate and yelled for justice, the city swarmed with Gallic fighting-cocks, spurred, and crowing vengeance.

night. And then the Frenchman composedly affirmed his con- | last, and told the first persons whom he met what he had found viction that the knife had been intended to reach his own heart, there. and by the assassin of poor Nanna. Schmidt, he argued, was a stranger in Rome, still he was just his own height, and blonde also. Moreover, he was almost the only man in Rome at that moment who wore a little gray felt hat exactly like his own. "In fine, I have a presentiment, my dear," said the Frenchman, in a cheerful voice. "I am perfectly convinced that little boy will slay me. Bah! it is very excusable, and I don't blame him the least in the world. The poor devil must have suffered horribly when he saw my picture. Naturally, he took the worst for granted. Poor little angel of the Via Sabina! We behaved like rascals in that affair there, my dear; in particular me. Forget not when the boy kills me that I pardon him. But take care for thyself; he may find out the whole truth in detail presently."

Wilton then told him what Tota had said on the previous afternoon, and that she had more than a vague presentiment of discovery, through the maudlin confessions of Antonio.

Laforêt looked a little thoughtful.

"In truth," said he, 'the tragedy promises to be of those where all the personages are killed in the fifth act, and the stage becomes strewn with dead bodies. Apparently six or seven of us are due to the just vengeance of Signor Felice. At present I am possibly the scapegoat of our society, and I deserve the position for my idiotic vanity that could not resist exposing my best study! But he will hardly be soothed by discovering that he made uno sbaglio in killing that poor little dear. Adieu, my friend, come and sup with me at the Falcone this eveningthat is to say, if Nemesis spares me till after supper. Au revoir." Laforêt turned on his heel, and strolled across the piazza, up and down which they had been walking, toward the Pincian steps, humming free-and-easy chansons.

No people make so exasperating a noise with their tongues as the French, and their diu roused the comatose Polizia into quite abnormal wideawakefulness. It really seemed impossible that the assassin could go at large many hours longer. Rumor connected the two murders so far as to fix them both on the point of the same knife; and a very indistinct phantom of the true story began to reveal itself in the artist world. When Sandford saw Laforêt's picture he felt instantaneously convinced that the model for it had been obtained by some unscrupulous stratagem, and he had told Tom Wilton as much. Whereupon his troubled aspect had not only confirmed Sandford's first idea, but added to it a strong suspicion of Wilton's own complicity. In the forenoon of the day after Laforêt's murder, as soon as Sandford heard of it, he went to Wilton's studio, and found him in a pitiable state of nervous excitement. And then at last he threw himself on the friendly sympathy of his old chum, and told him the whole fatal story of the Sleeping Nymph. Kindly Sandford, being asked for bread, could not stone him with hard truths, or kick a man that was down with the pitiless foot of a Job's comforter. But he strongly urged him to quit Rome at once, for he believed that until Felice was in prison, any hour might put forth a new red blossom of murder. But Wilton did not much like this counsel, partly because he thought it might look pusillanimous to follow it; and Sandford

Wilton went to keep his appointment with Laforêt toward left him half sobbing, but obstinate, resolved to stay and, as he eight o'clock.

Ave Maria began to chime sweetly here and there, far and near over the sad old city, which the divine smile of a May sunset seemed to transfigure. Life, moving, many-voiced, manycolored, crowded the many thoroughfares and fountained piazzas, and a joyous calm seemed to fill even the grass-grown by-streets. But Wilton felt too wretched to drink delight from the lovely golden hour. He was, as I have said, a man of excitable nerves, sensitive, though selfish; his pleasant existence had been spoiled by the tragic element that had come into it, by the ever-recurring prick of conscience, and by an ever-threatening, ghastly presentiment.

He came, at the corner of the square, upon a group of girls dancing the saltarello, flying and circling and bounding, with arms akimbo, to the quick, jingling tambourine that one of them tossed and thrummed. The usual knot of idle fellows lazily watched them, and even a priest or two, on their way to church, paused on the skirt of the little crowd.

Wilton was out of tune with mirth, and turned into a very unfrequented vicolo, by which he could get to the Falcone. It was overshadowed on either hand, all down its length, by the blank backs of tall gray houses, or by lofty dead walls. Wilton was rather near-sighted, but almost as soon as he entered the empty little street, he saw that something or some one lay under the high wall about half way down it. A man asleep? -yes; then no peasant, by the clothes. Clothes! Wilton gave a shout of terror and ran. He ran, and stopped, and saw. It was too true. The clothes were the clothes of Laforêt, and the face was the dreadful fixed face of the murdered Frenchman. Nemesis had not spared him till after supper. He lay on his back in the darkening alley, stone dead; there was only a little mark on the breast of his light summer waistcoat, only a very little mark:

expressed it, "take his chance, and let his death expiate." This poor, weak fellow shrieked out at the pain of self-reproach, was so stupid with the pain that he coud not be thankful for it, nor recognize in it the first effort of his moral constitution to throw off disease. But, just when his life had become a punishment greater than he could bear, it somehow deadened the wholesome agony to call his desire to shirk it by the grand name of expiation.

Sandford went from him to Tota, anxious to hear anything that the woman might have to impart. She was in a paroxysm of bodily terror that had stripped her of all her impudence, and left her without a rag of lying to cover her iniquity. Her teeth chattered, and her face was convulsed, while she told Sandford that Felice knew everything. She dared not leave the house herself; but certain friends of hers watched Antonio for her, and this morning had brought fatal tidings. Felice, brutalized by crime and quite reckless, had come openly the night before, straight, probably, from Laforêt's murder, in a low aquavita shop, where Antonio sat amidst the scum of Roman scoundrelism. Felice's apparition had roused the wretched creature, reduced to imbecility by constant drunkenness; and, with first feeble fury, next with maudlin tears, he had upbraided the murderer of his child. And then, too sunk in idiotcy to remember, or combine, or foresee, he had driveled out the whole shameful truth, bit by bit, incoherently, yet intelligibly enough. Plot, plotters, names, the bargain, poor little Nanna's perfect innocence—all ! The miserable young fellow, almost raving mad, would have flung himself at Antonio, had not half a dozen of the ruffians present choked him off. He had then, baffled for the moment, rushed out of the den, and once more disappeared. Such was Tota's ominous report.

That night Sandford again met Wilton at a friend's rooms, and from a feeling of uneasiness he could not control, went

"Not so big as a well, or so wide as a church-door, but it will away at the same time, in order to accompany him home.

serve, it will serve."

Wilton found himself muttering those words under his breath, half crazed by the shock and the horror, half conscious that his reason was in danger. He tried in vain to move, and stood there staring down on the young Frenchman's dead face, that seemed to stare back with wide blank eyes. It was quite dusk even in the open piazza then he staggered out of the vicolo at

Wilton lived in Via Sistina, and the shortest road was over the Pincian steps. Both men were very thoughtful, and walked, without speaking a word, through the sweet, balmy moonlight. All of a sudden, half way up the steps, a strange voice broke the silence; at the same instant Wilton cried out "I am struck!" and grappled with a man who seemed to have started out of the black shadow of an angle in the stairs. Wilton, ap

PLEASANT HOMES.