Once the shutting of a heavy door echoed
through the house, and for many minutes
after the last reverberation had died away,
her heart beat with dreadful rapidity, and
she waited in the tremor of suspense and
fear, expecting to be summoned by Paul's
voice. No one came. The afternoon was
waning, and at last she heard one of the
women-servants singing a Tuscan love-
song, as she moved about the house at her
work. That was a reassuring sound.
Veronica sat up feeling dizzy and half-blind as
she faced the light. There were no tears on
her face, but it was deadly pale, except one
crimson streak, where she had pressed her
cheek against the cushion. Her first act
was to lock the door which communicated
with the corridor. There was another door
in the boudoir leading to her bedchamber, to
which there was no other access. Then she
went to the looking-glass and contemplated
herself.

"What a ghost I look!" she thought,
"and how I have been tormenting myself!
And perhaps for nothing, after all!"

She hesitated a moment, but finally took
a book from the table, unlocked the door
of the boudoir, rang the bell, and returned
to the sofa.

"Miladi rang?" said her maid, coming
to the door. Veronica had taught all the
servants to give her that title.

"Yes. What o'clock is it? I shall not
dress for dinner. I fell asleep over my
book, and have made my head ache. Get
me some eau-de-cologne. Put on my
peignoir, and shut out that glare. How
red the sunset is! You must brush my
hair in the dark as well as you can. I
cannot bear the light."

It was not dark when the maid had
closed the persiennes, but it was dim.
Veronica's white wrapper gleamed in the
twilight. The maid stood patiently brushing
out her mistress's thick tresses in silence.

"Did you ever faint, Beppina?" asked
her mistress.

"Faint? No, miladi."

"You have seen people in fainting fits
perhaps?"

"Yes; I saw a girl once, who was in a
dead swoon."

"There is no danger in them, of course?"

"Who knows!" answered Beppina, with
an expressive shrug.

"What made the girl you saw faint?"

"Hunger, miladi."

"Hunger!"

"Yes. Her damo* had been a
Garibaldino, and he got wounded in the wars; and
when he came back to Florence, weak and
sickly, he could get no work, and his people
were too poor to help him, so Gigia—she was
a dressmaker's apprentice—kept him, and
gave him nearly all her food. And one day,
when she was going to her work, she turned
giddy, and fell down in the street, and they
took her to a hospital, and the doctor said
she had not had enough to eat; and that that
was all that was the matter with her."

* Sweetheart.

"How dreadful! It must be awful to
be so poor!"

"Eh, che vuole? She couldn't have
loved him more if she had been rich! And
she saved his life, and that was a consolazione
di Dio."

"Sir John's love, miladi, and will you
excuse him from coming into the dining-
room? He will have the honour of joining
you in the evening afterwards."

Paul said these words from the boudoir,
holding the door that communicated with
the bed-room in his hand.

"How is Sir John?" asked Veronica in
English.

"Sir John has reposed, miladi, and is
quite well, only a little fatigued with the
heat."

"I shall not come down to dinner. Tell
them to serve it in the little blue room next
my boudoir."

"Yes, miladi. Then I shall tell the
signor principe that miladi does not
receive this evening?"

Veronica was emboldened by the fact
that, while Paul's face could be seen
illumined by the setting sun, whose light
streamed into the boudoir, her own face
was in shadow. She had sometimes been,
vexed with herself for being in a kind of
awe under Paul's grave glance, and for
having allowed more than one caprice and
manifestation of wilfulness to be checked
by its silent influence. Now she resolved
to consult her own will and pleasure, and
she threw a little superfluous asperity into
the voice in which she answered:

"No; certainly not! I have given you
no such directions."

"Miladi wishes to have the dinner served
for two in the blue room?"

"Yes.—No! I will dine in the dining-
saloon, and—is the prince here?"

"The signor principe is under the west
loggia, smoking a cigar."

"Have you mentioned to him that Sir
John was—was not well?"

"Sir John does not choose me to say
so, miladi."