This was added with a sneer. Enrica grew crimson.

"Well, well," the marchesa went on to say, "it is too late now--the
thing is done. But remember I have warned you. You chose Count Nobili,
not I. Enrica, I have done my duty to you and to my own name. Now go
and tell the cavaliere I want him."

The marchesa was always wanting the cavaliere; she was closeted
with him for hours at a time. These conferences all ended in one
conclusion--that she was irretrievably ruined. No one knew this better
than the marchesa herself; but her haughty reluctance either to accept
Count Nobili's money, or to give up Enrica, was the cause of unknown
distress to Trenta.

Meanwhile the prospect of the wedding had stirred up every one in the
house to a sort of aimless activity. Adamo strode about, his sad, lazy
eyes gazing nowhere in particular. Adamo affected to work hard, but
in reality he did nothing but sweep the leaves away from the border
of the fountain, and remove the _debris_ caused by the fire. Then he
would go down and feed the dogs, who, when at home, lived in a sort
of cave cut out of the cliff under the tower--Argo, the long-haired
mastiff, and Tootsey, the rat-terrier, and Juno, the lurcher, and the
useless bull-dog, who grinned horribly--Adamo fed them, then let them
out to run at will over the flowers, while he went to his mid-day
meal.

Adamo had no soul for flowers, or he could not have done this; he
could not have seen a bright, many-eyed balsam, or an amber-leaved
zinnia with tufted yellow breast, die miserably on their earthy
beds, trampled under the dogs' feet. Even the marchesa, who concerned
herself so little with such things, had often hidden him for his
carelessness; but Adamo had a way of his own, and by that way he
abided, slowly returning to it, spite of argument or remonstrance.

"Domine Dio orders the weather, not I," Adamo said in a grunt to Pipa
when his mistress had specially upbraided him for not watering the
lemon-trees ranged along the terraces. "Am I expected to give holy oil
to the plants as Fra Pacifico does to the sick? Che! che! what will be
will be!"

So Adamo went to his dinner in all peace; and Argo and his friends
knocked down the flowers, and scratched deep holes in the gravel,
barking wildly all the time.

The marchesa, sitting in grave confabulation with Cavaliere Trenta,
rubbed her white hands as she listened.

There was neither portcullis, nor moat, nor drawbridge to her feudal
str