"You believe in them, then?"
"Here in San Marco, yes. But not when I am in Bloombury."
"Oh!" cried Peter, "are you really from Bloombury? I knew you were from up country but I hardly dared to hope—if you will permit me——" He searched for his card which she accepted without looking at it.
"You are Mr. Peter Weatheral, aren't you? Mrs. Merrithew thought she recognized you yesterday."
"Is that why she glared at me so? But anyway I am obliged to her, though I haven't vestige of a recollection of her."
"She didn't suppose you had. Her husband sold you some land once. But of course everybody in Bloombury knows the Mr. Weatheral who went from there to the city and made his fortune."
"A sorry one," said Peter. "But if you are really from Bloombury why don't I remember you? I go there with Ellen every summer, and she knows everybody."
"Yes; she is so kind. Everybody says that. But I'm really from Harmony. I taught the Bloombury school last year. I am Savilla Dassonville."
"Oh, I knew your father then! Now that I come to think of it, it was he who laid the foundation of my greatness," Peter smiled whimsically. "And I knew your mother; she was a very lovely lady."
He realized as the girl's eyes filled with tears, that this must have been the child at whose birth, he had heard, the mother had died. "But I suppose we mustn't talk about Bloombury in San Marco," he blamed his inadvertence, "though that doesn't seem to want talking about either. When you said that just now about its being a picture-book, I was thinking how like it was to one of those places I used to go to in my youth—you know where you go in your mind when you don't like the place where you are. So like. I used to call it the House of the Shining Walls."