In Capri April, the beautiful April of Southern Italy, was half-way spent before the Villa Camellia broke up for the holidays.

There were the usual term-end examinations, at which distressed damsels, with agitated minds and ink-stained fingers, sat at desks furnished with piles of foolscap, and cudgeled their brains to supply facts to fill the sheets of blank paper; there was the reading out of results, with congratulations to those who had succeeded, and glum looks from Miss Rodgers to those who had failed; then followed the bringing down of boxes, the joyful flutter of packing, the last breakfast, and the final universal exodus.
"Good-by, dear old thing!" "Do miss me a little!" "Hope you'll have a ripping time!" "Be a sport and write to me, won't you ?" "Hold me down, somebody, I'm ready to fizz over!" "You won't forget me, dearie?
All right! Just so long as we know!" Lorna, who had anticipated previous vacations as simply a relief from the toil of lessons, went home to Naples with quite altered feelings from those of former occasions.

She was determined that, if it possibly lay in her power, she would make her father enjoy the time she spent with him.

In spite of injustice and cruel wrong there might surely be some happy hours together, and she would win him to live in the present, instead of continually brooding over the past.

The immense, terrible pathos of the situation appealed to the deepest chords in her nature.
Her father was still in the prime of his years, a handsome, clever man, who might have done much in the world.