desolate than ever. She
thought that everybody in the street looked draggled and disappointed.
Near Santa Lucia she passed a wretched vender of strung filberts and
doubtful cakes, mounting guard over his poor little handcart with a
dilapidated umbrella, under the half-shelter of a projecting balcony. A
couple of barefooted boys crouched on the wet pavement by the
sea-stairs, with a piece of sacking drawn over both their heads
together, gnawing hard-tack, and as the rain struck the stones, it
splashed up in their faces under their sack. On the left, the coral
shops showed their brilliant wares dimly through the rain-streaks, with
closed glass doors through which here and there the disconsolate face of
the shopkeeper was visible, as he stood gazing out upon the dismal,
dripping scene. A sailor man came out of the marine headquarters at the
turning of the Strada dei Giganti, bending his flat cap against the rain
and burying his ears in the blue linen collar of his shirt, which was
turned back over his thick jacket. The water splashed out from under his
heavy shoes, to the right and left, as he walked quickly up the hill.
Beyond that, the Piazza San Ferdinando was deserted, and the broad wet
pavement lay flat and darkly gleaming upward to the broad, watery sky
that stretched grey and even, without shading, like a sheet of wet
india-rubber over all the city. Then the Toledo, where the gutters could
not swallow the deluge, but sent their overflow in dark yellow streams
down each side of the street--then the narrower, darker ways and lanes
between the high houses and the low, black doorways, through the heart
of old Naples, home at last to the Palazzo Macomer.

Veronica was glad to get back to the fire in her own room, and to feel
dry again--for seeing so much water had given her the sensation of being
drenched. And she sat down to think over what had happened in the
morning, trying to understand her own disappointment, because she
believed that she had expected nothing, and therefore that she could not
be disappointed. She was very glad to get back to her own room. So far
as she at all knew what a home meant, the Palazzo Macomer was home to
her, and she had no distinct recollection of any other. Gregorio and
Matilde and Bosio were her own family, so far as she had ever known what
to understand by the word. They were more familiar to her than any other
people in the world possibly could be, and if she felt that she had
little