The evenings were her golden times, for then they would go out together, sometimes into the Italian quarters of the city, or sometimes by tram into the suburbs, where there were beautiful promenades with views of the sea.

In these walks she grew to be his companion, and instead of shrinking from him as in former days, she met him on a new footing and gave him of her best.

Together they planned a home in a fresh hemisphere, and talked hopefully of better things that were perhaps in store for them over the ocean.

And so life went on, and father and daughter might have realized their vision, and have emigrated to another continent where no one knew their name or their former history, and have made a fresh start and won comparative success, but Dame Fortune, who sometimes has a use for our past however bitterly she seems to have mismanaged it, interfered again, and with fateful fingers re-flung the dice.
It certainly did not seem a fortunate circumstance, but quite the reverse, when the grandchildren of their landlady, who occupied the _etage_ above their rooms, sickened with measles.

Lorna had never had the complaint, and it was, of course, most important that she should not convey germs back to the Villa Camellia, so it was a vital necessity to move her immediately out of the area of infection.