y no more
attention to me than they would to a kitten asleep under the table.
While they were making a great noise I slipped quietly away unperceived.
The smell of the wine and the food sickened me. I am used to the sweet
perfume of the heather, and the pure resinous odour of the pines. I
cannot breathe in such an atmosphere as there is down below there."

"And you were not afraid to wander alone, without a light, through the
long, dark corridors, and the lonely, deserted rooms?"

"Chiquita does not know what it is to be afraid--her eyes can see in
the dark, and her feet never stumble. The very owls shut their eyes when
they meet her, and the bats fold their wings when she comes near their
haunts. Wandering ghosts stand aside to let her pass, or turn back when
they see her approaching. Night is her comrade and hides no secrets from
her, and Chiquita never betrays them to the day."

Her eyes flashed and dilated as she spoke, and Isabelle looked at her
with growing wonder, not unmixed with a vague sensation of fear.

"I like much better to stay here, in this heavenly quiet, by the fire
with you," continued the child, "than down there in all the uproar. You
are so beautiful that I love to look at you-you are like the Blessed
Virgin that I have seen shining above the altar. Only from afar though,
for they always chase me out of the churches with the dogs, because I
am so shabby and forlorn. How white your hand is! Mine looks like a
monkey's paw beside it--and your hair is as fine and soft as silk, while
mine is all rough and tangled. Oh! I am so horribly ugly--you must think
so too."

"No, my dear child," Isabelle replied, touched by her naive expressions
of affection and admiration, "I do not think so. You have beauty
too--you only need to make yourself neat and clean to be as pretty a
little girl as one would wish to see."

"Do you really think so? Are you telling me true? I would steal fine
clothes if they would make me pretty, for then Agostino would love me."

This idea brought a little flush of colour to her thin brown cheeks, and
for a few minutes she seemed lost in a pleasant reverie.

"Do you know where we are?" asked Isabelle, when Chiquita looked up at
her again.

"In a chateau that belongs to the great seignior who has so much money,
and who wanted to carry you off at Poitiers. I had only to draw the bolt
and it would have been done then. But you gave me the pearl necklace,
and I love you, and I would