n baiocchi for another man's bad wine, for
the sake of winning so much!" replied Sora Nanna, who was a careful
soul. "Of course you paid for the wine?"

"Eh--of course. They pay for wine when they come here. One takes a
little and one gives a little. This is life."

Annetta busied herself with the simple preparations for supper, while
they talked. Dalrymple watched her idly, and he thought she was pale,
and that her eyes were very bright. She had set a plate for herself, but
had forgotten her glass.

"And you? Do you not drink?" asked Stefanone. "You have no glass."

"What does it matter?" She sat down between her father and mother.

"Drink out of mine, my little daughter," said Stefanone, holding his
glass to her lips with a laugh, as though she had been a little child.

She looked quietly into his eyes for a moment, before she touched the
wine with her lips.

"Yes," she answered, with a little emphasis. "I will drink out of your
glass now."

"Better so," laughed Stefanone, who was glad to be reconciled, for he
loved the girl, in spite of his occasional violence of temper.

"What does it mean?" asked Sora Nanna, her cunning peasant's eyes
looking from one to the other, and seeming to belie her stupid face.

"Nothing," answered Stefanone. "We were playing together. Signor
Englishman," he said, turning to Dalrymple, "you must sometimes wish
that you were married, and had a wife like Nanna, and a daughter like
Annetta."

"Of course I do," said Dalrymple, with a smile.

Before very long, he took his book and went upstairs to bed, being tired
and sleepy after a long day spent on the hillside in a fruitless search
for certain plants which, according to his books, were to be found in
that part of Italy, but which he had not yet seen. He fell asleep,
thinking of Maria Addolorata's lovely face and fair hair, on which he
had never laid eyes. In his dreams he heard a rare voice ringing true,
that touched him strangely. The gusty wind made the panes of his bedroom
window rattle, and in the dream he was tapping on Maria Addolorata's
casement and calling softly to her, to open it and speak to him, or
calling her by name, with his extraordinary foreign accent. And he
thought he was tapping louder and louder, upon the glass and upon the
wooden frame, louder and louder still. Then he heard his name called
out, and his heart jumped as though it would have turned upside down in
its place, and then seemed to sink again like