head. "You eat too much."

The Menotti lived in a small stuffy flat on the third floor of 25,
Piazza Tolomei. It had the one advantage of being central, but was
otherwise extremely inconvenient. The kitchen was hot and airless, and
the servant had to sleep in a dark cupboard adjoining, in an
atmosphere compounded of the scent of cheese, black beetles and old
boots. There were four bedrooms besides, all opening on to the
dining-room; and a tiny drawing-room, seldom used and never dusted,
was filled to overflowing with gilt furniture and decorative fantasies
in wool work.

The Menotti did not entertain. They met their friends at church, or at
the theatre, or in the Lizza gardens, where they walked every evening
in the summer. No man had ever seen them other than well dressed, but
in the house they wore loose white cotton jackets and old skirts. They
were _en deshabille_ now, though their heads were elaborately dressed
and their faces powdered, and Maria's waist was considerably larger
than it appeared to be when she was socially "visible."

"I must breathe sometimes," she said.

The three girls were inclined to stoutness, but Gemma drank vinegar
and ate sparingly, and so had succeeded in keeping herself slim
hitherto, though she was only three years younger than Maria, who was
twenty-nine and looked forty.

Carmela was podgy, but she might lace or not just as she pleased. No
one would look at her in any case since her kind, good-humoured, silly
face was marked with smallpox.

Gemma was the pride of her aunt and the hope of the family. The girls
were poor, and it is hard for such to find husbands, but she had
recently become engaged to a young lawyer from Lucca, who had been
staying with friends in Siena when he saw and fell in love with the
girl whom the students at the University named the "Odalisque."

Hers was the strange, boding loveliness of a pale orchid. She had no
colour, but her curved lips were faintly pink, as were the palms of
her soft, idle hands. "I shall be glad when she is married," her aunt
said often. "It is very well for Maria or Carmela to go through the
streets alone, but Gemma is otherwise, and I cannot be always running
after her. Then her temper ... _Dio mio!_"

"Perhaps it is the vinegar," suggested Carolina rather spitefully.

"No. She wants a husband."

When the dinner was over Signora Carosi went to her room to lie down,
and her two elder nieces followed her example, but Carmela pas