and a
beefsteak, which on this occasion was really of beef, before him.
Stefanone was absent in Rome, with a load of wine. Sora Nanna sat on
Dalrymple's right, industriously knitting in Italian fashion, one of the
needles stuck into and supported by a wooden sheath thrust into her
waist-band, while she worked off the stitches with the others. Annetta
sat opposite the Scotchman, but a little on one side of the lamp, so
that she could see his face.

"Mother," she said suddenly, without lifting her chin from the hand in
which it rested, "you do not know anything! This Signor Englishman is
making love with a nun in the convent! Eh--what do you think of it? Only
this was wanting. A little more and the lightning will fall upon the
convent! These Protestants! Oh, these blessed Protestants! They respect
nothing, not even the saints!"

"My daughter! what are you saying?"

Sora Nanna's fingers did not pause in their work, nor did her eyes look
up, but the deep furrow showed itself in her thick peasant's forehead,
and her coarse, hard lips twitched clumsily with the beginning of a
smile.

"What am I saying? The truth. Ask rather of the Signore whether it is
not true."

"It is silly," said Dalrymple, growing unnaturally red, and looking up
sharply at Annetta, before he took his next mouthful.

"Look at him, mother!" laughed the girl. "He is red, red--he seems to me
a boiled shrimp. Eh, this time I have guessed it! And as for Sister
Maria Addolorata, she no longer sees with her eyes! To-day, when you
were carrying in the baskets, you and the other women who went with us,
I asked her whether the abbess was satisfied with the new doctor, and
she answered that he was a very wise man, much wiser than Sor Tommaso.
So I told her that it was a pity, because Sor Tommaso was getting well
and would not allow the English doctor to come instead of him much
longer. Then she looked at me. By Bacchus, I was afraid. Certain eyes!
Not even a cat when you take away her kittens! A little more and she
would have eaten me. And then her face made itself of marble--like that
face of a woman that is built into the fountain in the piazza.
Arch-priest! What a face!"

The girl stared hard at Dalrymple, and her mouth laughed wickedly at his
evident embarrassment, while there was something very different from
laughter in her eyes. During the long speech, Sora Nanna had stopped
knitting, and she looked from her daughter to the Scotchman with a sort
of