A bird perched on a bough of jasmine broke into a low, sweet song, the soft wind blew and scattered the petals of a white rose at our feet.

I gave the infant back to the nurse, who waited to receive it, and said, with a smile, "Tell my wife we have welcomed her May-blossom." Guido laid his hand on my shoulder as the servant retired; his face was unusually pale.
"Thou art a good fellow, Fabio!" he said, abruptly.
"Indeed! How so ?" I asked, half laughingly; "I am no better than other men." "You are less suspicious than the majority," he returned, turning away from me and playing idly with a spray of clematis that trailed on one of the pillars of the veranda.
I glanced at him in surprise.

"What do you mean, amico?
Have I reason to suspect any one ?" He laughed and resumed his seat at the breakfast-table.
"Why, no!" he answered, with a frank look.

"But in Naples the air is pregnant with suspicion--jealousy's dagger is ever ready to strike, justly or unjustly--the very children are learned in the ways of vice.
Penitents confess to priests who are worse than penitents, and by Heaven! in such a state of society, where conjugal fidelity is a farce"-- he paused a moment, and then went on--"is it not wonderful to know a man like you, Fabio?
A man happy in home affections, without a cloud on the sky of his confidence ?" "I have no cause for distrust," I said.

"Nina is as innocent as the little child of whom she is to-day the mother." "True!" exclaimed Ferrari.