oo, an Austrian?"

"Yes." The lady nodded. "I, too, am an Austrian."

"And yet," remarked Annunziata, "you speak Italian just as I do."

"It is very good of you to say so," laughed the lady.

"No--it is the truth," said Annunziata.

"But is it not good to tell the truth?" the lady asked.

"No," said Annunziata. "It is only a duty." And again she shook her
head, slowly, darkly, with an effect of philosophic melancholy. "That is
very strange and very hard," she pointed out. "If you do not do that
which is your duty, it is bad, and you are punished. But if you do do
it, that is not good,--it is only what you ought to do, and you are not
rewarded." And she fetched her breath in the saddest of sad little
sighs. Then, briskly covering her cheerfulness, "And you speak English,
besides," she said.

"Oh?" wondered the lady. "Are you a clairvoyante? How do you know that I
speak English?"

"My friend Prospero told me so," said Annunziata.

"Your friend Prospero?" the lady repeated. "You quote your friend
Prospero very often. Who is your friend Prospero?"

"He is a signore," said Annunziata. "He has seen you, he has seen your
form, in the garden and in the olive wood."

"Oh," said the lady.

"And I suppose he must have heard you speak English," Annunziata added.
"He lives at the presbytery."

"And where, by-the-by, do _you_ live?" asked the lady.

"I live at the presbytery too," said Annunziata. "I am the niece of the
parroco. I am the orphan of his only brother. My friend Prospero lives
with us as a boarder. He is English."

"Indeed?" said the lady. "Prospero is a very odd name for an
Englishman."

"Prospero is not his name," said Annunziata. "His name is Gian. That is
English for Giovanni."

"But why, then," the lady puzzled, "do you call him Prospero?"

"Prospero is a name I have given him," explained Annunziata. "One day I
told his fortune. I can tell fortunes--with olive-stones, with
playing-cards, or from the lines of the hand. I will tell you yours, if
you wish. We

My Friend Prospero

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