"What do the nuns do all day?" he asked. "I suppose you see them,
sometimes. There must be young ones amongst them."

Annetta glanced more keenly at the Scotchman's quiet face, and then
laughed.

"There is one, if you could see her! The abbess's niece. Oh, that one is
beautiful. She seems to me a painted angel!"

"The abbess's niece? What is she like? Let me see, the abbess is a
princess, is she not?"

"Yes, a great princess of the Princes of Gerano, of Casa Braccio, you
know. They are always abbesses. And the young one will be the next, when
this one dies. She is Maria Addolorata, in religion, but I do not know
her real name. She has a beautiful face and dark eyes. Once I saw her
hair for a moment. It is fair, but not like yours. Yours is red as a
tomato."

"Thank you," said Dalrymple, with something like a laugh. "Tell me more
about the nun."

"If I tell you, you will fall in love with her," objected Annetta. "They
say that men with red hair fall in love easily. Is it true? If it is, I
will not tell you any more about the nun. But I think you are in love
with the poor old Grape-eater. It is good ham, is it not? By Bacchus, I
fed him on chestnuts with my own hands, and he was always stealing the
grapes. Chestnuts fattened him and the grapes made him sweet. Speaking
with respect, he was a pig for a pope."

"He will do for a Scotch doctor then," answered Dalrymple. "Tell me,
what does this beautiful nun do all day long?"

"What does she do? What can a nun do? She eats cabbage and prays like
the others. But she has charge of all the convent linen, so I see her
when I go with my mother. That is because the Princes of Gerano first
gave the linen to the convent after it was all stolen by the Turks in
1798. So, as they gave it, their abbesses take care of it."

Dalrymple laughed at the extraordinary historical allusion compounded of
the very ancient traditions of the Saracens in the south, and of the
more recent wars of Napoleon.

"So she takes care of the linen," he said. "That cannot be very amusing,
I should think."

"They are nuns," answered the girl. "Do you suppose they go about
seeking to amuse themselves? It is an ugly life. But Sister Maria
Addolorata sings to herself, and that makes the abbess angry, because it
is against the rules to sing except in church. I would not live in that
convent--not if they would fill my apron with gold pieces."

"But why did this beautiful girl become a nun, then? Was s