rings, and Sora Nanna had eight
or ten strings of large coral beads around her throat.

Annetta was barely fifteen years old, brown, slim, and active as a
lizard. She was one of those utterly unruly and untamable girls of whom
there are two or three in every Italian village, in mountain or plain, a
creature in whom a living consciousness of living nature took the place
of thought, and with whom to be conscious was to speak, without reason
or hesitation. The small, keen, black eyes were set under immense and
arched black eyebrows which made the eyes themselves seem larger than
they were, and the projecting temples cast shadows to the cheek which
hid the rudimentary modelling of the coarse lower lids. The ears were
flat and ill-developed, but close to the head and not large; the teeth
very short, though perfectly regular and exceedingly white; the lips
long, mobile, brown rather than red, and generally parted like those
of a wild animal. The girl's smoothly sinewy throat moved with every
step, showing the quick play of the elastic cords and muscles. Her
blue-black hair was plaited, though far from neatly, and the braids were
twisted into an irregular flat coil, generally hidden by the flap of the
white embroidered cloth cross-folded upon her head and hanging down
behind.

[Illustration: Nanna and Annetta.--Vol. I., p. 15.]

For some minutes the mother and daughter continued to pick their way
down the winding lanes between the dark houses of the upper village.
Then Sora Nanna put out her right hand as a signal to Annetta that she
meant to stop, and she stood still on the steep descent and turned
deliberately till she could see the girl.

"What are you saying?" she began, as though there had been no pause in
the conversation. "That Sister Maria Addolorata sins in her throat! But
how can she sin in her throat, since she sees no man but the gardener
and the priest? Indeed, you say foolish things!"

"And what has that to do with it?" inquired Annetta. "She must have seen
enough of men in Rome, every one of them a great lord. And who tells you
that she did not love one of them and does not wish that she were
married to him? And if that is not a sin in the throat, I do not know
what to say. There is my answer."

"You say foolish things," repeated Sora Nanna.

Then she turned deliberately away and began to descend once more, with
an occasional dissatisfied movement of the shoulders.

"For the rest," observed Annetta, "it