na Santissima!" she cried, shrinking back.

She crossed herself, and did not dare to meet Gloria's eyes again for
some time.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

SORA NANNA showed her new lodgers their rooms. They were the ones
Dalrymple had occupied long ago, together with a third, opening
separately from the same landing. In what had been the Scotchman's
laboratory, and which was now turned into a small bedroom, a large chest
stood in a corner, of the sort used by the peasant women to this day for
their wedding outfits.

"If it is not in your way, I will leave it here," said Sora Nanna.
"There are certain things in it."

"What things?" asked Gloria, idly, and for the sake of making
acquaintance with the woman, rather than out of curiosity.

"Things, things," answered Nanna. "Things of that poor girl's. We had a
daughter, Signora."

"Did she die long ago?" inquired Gloria, in a tone of sympathy.

"We lost her, Signora," said Nanna, simply. "Look at these beds! They
are new, new! No one has ever slept in them. And linen there is, as much
as you can ask for. We are country people, Signora, but we are good
people. I do not say that we are rich. One knows--in Rome everything is
beautiful. Even the chestnuts are of gold. Here, we are in the country,
Signora. You will excuse, if anything is wanting."

But Gloria was by no means inclined to find fault. She breathed more
freely in the mountain air, she was tired with the long drive from
Tivoli, where they had spent the previous night, and she was more hungry
than she had been for a long time.

It was not dark when they sat down to supper in the old guest chamber
which opened upon the street. Nanna was anxious and willing to bring
them their supper upstairs, but Gloria preferred the common room. She
said it would amuse her, and in reality it was easier for her not to be
alone with Griggs, and by going downstairs on the first evening she
meant to establish a precedent for the whole summer. He had told her
that he must go back to Rome for his work on the next day but one, and
she counted the hours before her up to the minute when she should be
free and alone.

They sat down at the old table at which Dalrymple had eaten his solitary
meals so often, more than twenty years earlier. There was no change.
There were the same solid, old-fashioned silver forks and spoons, there
were plates of the same coarse china, tumblers of the same heavy pressed
glass. Had Dalrymple been there, h