me," said he, "did you ever buy a ticket, Laura?
Did you ever wish to do so?"

"Surely you know, Carlo, I never did either
the one or the other. I neither understand
anything about it, nor ever attempted to understand
it. The numbers for my terno are my own true
love, my art, and my old work-bench. Papa
would tell the numbers sympathetic to all three
in a minute. Will my terno come up, Carlo?"
said she, with a look which made it impossible for
Carlo to scold.

"Dearest," he said, "I would rather talk of
our happiness under any other form. Can it be
that you really have any shadow of belief in the
possibility of any connexion between the
numbers to be drawn out of the wheel at the
lottery, and all the calculations, sympathetic
numbers, and dreams that your father, and so
many others, put so much faith in?"

"In truth, dearest Carlo," replied Laura,
seriously, but without a particle of the animation
and intense interest that had lighted up her face,
and lent fire to her eye, a few moments
previously, when she had been speaking of matters
of art—"in truth, dearest Carlo, I have never
given the question a thought, and know, as I said,
that I understand nothing about it. But——"

"Understand it, Laura!" broke in Carlo, the
sceptical and the sensible; "why, it is within the
comprehension of a baby."

"And yet they all speak of it," rejoined Laura,
humbly, "as a profound science and mystery, to
be fathomed only by the longest and deepest
mathematical study. See, now," she continued,
"what reasons I have to believe these things,
which seem to you so incredible. My dear, dear
father certainly was never considered wanting in
intelligence. You know, before pressing want of
money led him to devote all his attention to this
subject, how highly his talents were thought of
by all the men of art in Florence. And years of
deep study have only confirmed him more and
more in the certainty of his speculations."

Carlo groaned; but not letting him interrupt
her, she went on:

"Then, as you remarked yourself, my father is
far from singular in his belief. How many others
think like him? And then again, above all, that
book which he had with him this morning. I
have never so much as looked into it. But I
have often and often heard him quoting the
names of the great philosophers whose calculations
are there given. I know that the book
states the correspondences and sympathies of
numbers, and the possibility of winning in the
lottery by their means, as matters of fact. And
is it credible that the government and Holy
Church, which takes such ceaseless care to
prevent evil books of any kind from being printed,
would suffer that book to be published and sold
openly to thousands of people, deluding them in
the most cruel and wicked manner, if it were all
false? Is this in any way credible, I say?"

Carlo's Paris-grown ideas brought to his lips
some pithy expressions of his estimate of the
paternal care of "government and Holy Church,"
in reply to his Laura's triumphant arguments.
But he suppressed them, wisely judging that so
very large a dose of novel and startling doctrine,
administered all at once, might be more than was
good for the mental digestion of his pretty and
much-loved patient. So contenting himself with
inwardly resolving that a little enlightenment
on these matters should reach his Laura's deeply
art-instructed, but on all other subjects blank-
paper mind, at some future and more convenient
period, he merely said:

"Well, my sweet Laura, without pretending
to give up my own ideas on the matter, I will be
content if, as you tell me, you, at all events,
never felt any inclination to dabble in the lottery."

"And if I had, Carlo, which I truly never had,
would it not be enough for me to know that you
did not approve of it?"

This, as the speaker doubtless felt, could only
be answered by a very tender caress. And then
it was settled between them that the all-important
interview of the morrow should come off at
ten o'clock, at which hour Carlo was to call on
the old man for the purpose.

Of course Laura and Carlo would have sat on
where they were as long as ever the two old
men in the front shop chose to leave them
undisturbed. But it was not long after they had
finished their business and type-reproducible
talk, and had betaken themselves to very orthodox
hand-in-hand moon-gazing, that the round-
about figure of Godpapa Niccolo appeared
in the too narrow frame of the little doorway
between the two rooms. Laudadio, he said, was
specially absorbed in some calculations of the
influence which the full of the moon would have
on the drawing of the lottery on the following
Saturday at Rome, as deducible from the
numbers that came up the last time the drawing
took place at Rome in the quarter of the full
moon. And he had betaken himself to the room
above, which was reached by a ladder-like stair
constructed in the thickness of the wall. Carlo,
and he, he said, would go off to bed, and Laura
was to close the door behind them.

The engagement between Laura and Carlo was
perfectly well known to Sestini, and had his
warm approbation. The hundred dollars, he
said, were ready at the first intimation that the
wedding was fixed. He was not aware, however,
of Carlo's determination to bring matters to a crisis
by the proposal the reader has heard. As they
left the heavily ironed little door, which Laura
was heard barring and bolting inside, Carlo told
the old cavaliere his project, and asked his
opinion as to the probability of Signor Vanni's
acceptance of it.

"My opinion is," said Niccolo, "that he will
gladly accept it. For when a man's head is
occupied by the profound and intense studies
which engross my respected friend, I have
observed that he rarely troubles himself much
about meaner things. A wonderful head has old
Laudadio Vanni!"