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84 blush, as she stood with her white dress and broad-brimmed hat, suggestive of Tennyson's "Gardener's Daughter." So Travers thought, but then he was becoming unduly interested in the pretty young villager.

"May I pick some of this heliotrope, my favourite flower?"

"Certainly; let me make you a little buttonhole, of my best," and as they talked she proceeded to set together rosebud, mignonette and violet, daphne and maidenhair. Tying them with cotton from her rustic work-table near at hand, she presented the miniature bouquet to the young man.

"Why does this suggest the Tribuna of the Uffizzi?" he asked.

"I thought the gallery was called the 'Pitti,'" said the girl.

"No; that is further on—but have you ever been there?"

"Unfortunately not, only I was lately reading Ruskin's Makers of Florence, and Mrs. Oliphant's and Trollope's charming descriptions of the city. But why is my humble gift like the Tribuna? That is the little salon at Florence, is it not, in which the choicest masterpieces are gathered?"

"Yes; and this little nosegay contains, in the same way, the fairest flowers of your mimosa garden. Can you tell me where your father is? I called to ascertain."

"I thought you came to see me," the maiden was about to reply, but refrained. She remembered that in the world his position was other than hers.

"We have nothing to do with the 'outer world,'" he would urge, when the Sergeant's daughter gave expression to such thoughts.

"My father has not returned," said the girl with