"Why?" she repeated. "Because when I find the game going against me, I
prefer giving it up at once to waiting to be beaten."

"Ah! you refer to that last year's project of yours for making your
fortune among the sculptors. I should like to hear how it was you failed
with the wealthy young amateur. Remember that I fell ill before you
had any news to give me. Your absence when I returned from Lucca, and,
almost immediately afterward, the marriage of your intended conquest
to the sculptor's daughter, proved to me, of course, that you must have
failed. But I never heard how. I know nothing at this moment but the
bare fact that Maddalena Lomi won the prize."

"Tell me first, do she and her husband live together happily?"

"There are no stories of their disagreeing. She has dresses, horses,
carriages; a negro page, the smallest lap-dog in Italy--in short, all
the luxuries that a woman can want; and a child, by-the-by, into the
bargain."

"A child?"

"Yes; a child, born little more than a week ago."

"Not a boy, I hope?"

"No; a girl."

"I am glad of that. Those rich people always want the first-born to be
an heir. They will both be disappointed. I am glad of that."

"Mercy on us, Brigida, how fierce you look!"

"Do I? It's likely enough. I hate Fabio d'Ascoli and Maddalena
Lomi--singly as man and woman, doubly as man and wife. Stop! I'll tell
you what you want to know directly. Only answer me another question or
two first. Have you heard anything about her health?"

"How should I hear? Dressmakers can't inquire at the doors of the
nobility."

"True. Now one last question. That little simpleton, Nanina?"

"I have never seen or heard anything of her. She can't be at Pisa, or
she would have called at our place for work."

"Ah! I need not have asked about her if I had thought a moment
beforehand. Father Rocco would be sure to keep her out of Fabio's sight,
for his niece's sake."

"What, he really loved that 'thread-paper of a girl' as you called her?"

"Better than fifty such wives as he has got now! I was in the studio the
morning he was told of her departure from Pisa. A letter was privately
given to him, telling him that the girl had left the place out of a
feeling of honor, and had hidden herself beyond the possibility of
discovery, to prevent him from compromising himself with all his friends
by marrying her. Naturally enough, he would not believe that this was
her own doing; and, naturally enough also,