"I was not sad, Mr. Manfredi."
"Oh yes you were," said he, with smiling earnestness.
"The great beauty of the night impressed me. To you, perhaps, it may be little worth noticing after the skies of your native Italy."
"The skies are clearer here than in Italy; the air is purer and freer," he replied, with a sad smile.
"When so far away, do you never wish for home?"
"I did so once."
"And now?"
"I have no home, save on the sea."
This was said with such a melancholy and pathetic brevity, that Ethel gazed at the young man inquiringly, but in silence.
"I had a home in Italy once, madam—a home, though humble, as happy, perchance, as yours in England; but the Austrians came and brought death and sorrow upon it, so I turned my back on the place where the olives and acacias grew before my father's house, and returned there no more."