itles as prince and duke had come into use. But then, most of the old
families could tell of deeds as cruel and lives as passionate as any
remembered by Maria's race, and Italians, though superstitious in
unexpected ways, have little of that belief in hereditary fate which is
common enough in the gloomy north.

"Was Sister Maria Addolorata a great sinner, before she became a nun?"
asked Annetta, Sora Nanna's daughter, of her mother, one day, as they
came away from the convent.

"What are you saying!" exclaimed the washerwoman, in a tone of rebuke.
"She is a great lady, and the niece of the abbess and of the cardinal.
Sometimes certain ideas pass through your head, my daughter!"

And Sora Nanna gesticulated, unable to express herself.

"Then she sins in her throat," observed Annetta, calmly. "But you do not
even look at her--so many sheets--so many pillow-cases--and good day!
But while you count, I look."

"Why should I look at her?" inquired Nanna, shifting the big empty
basket she carried on her head, hitching her broad shoulders and
wrinkling her leathery forehead, as her small eyes turned upward. "Do
you take me for a man, that I should make eyes at a nun?"

"And I? Am I a man? And yet I look at her. I see nothing but her face
when we are there, and afterwards I think about it. What harm is there?
She sins in her throat. I know it."

Sora Nanna hitched her shoulders impatiently again, and said nothing.
The two women descended through the steep and narrow street, slippery
and wet with slimy, coal black mud that glittered on the rough
cobble-stones. Nanna walked first, and Annetta followed close behind
her, keeping step, and setting her feet exactly where her mother had
trod, with the instinctive certainty of the born mountaineer. With heads
erect and shoulders square, each with one hand on her hip and the other
hanging down, they carried their burdens swiftly and safely, with a
swinging, undulating gait as though it were a pleasure to them to move,
and would require an effort to stop rather than to walk on forever. They
wore shoes because they were well-to-do people, and chose to show that
they were when they went up to the convent. But for the rest they were
clad in the costume of the neighbourhood,--the coarse white shift, close
at the throat, the scarlet bodice, the short, dark, gathered skirt, and
the dark blue carpet apron, with flowers woven on a white stripe across
the lower end. Both wore heavy gold ear