the padrone:

"Dio mio, but they are merry!" she added, as the song was broken by a
distant peal of laughter.

Hermione came out upon the steps. She had been in the sitting-room
writing a letter to Miss Townly, who sent her long and tearful effusions
from London almost every day.

"Have you got the frying-pan ready, Lucrezia?" she asked.

"The frying-pan, signora!"

"Yes, for the fish they are bringing us."

Lucrezia looked knowing.

"Oh, signora, they will bring no fish."

"Why not? They promised last night. Didn't you hear?"

"They promised, yes, but they won't remember. Men promise at night and
forget in the morning."

Hermione laughed. She had been feeling a little dull, but now the sound
of the lusty voices and the laughter from the ravine filled her with a
sudden cheerfulness, and sent a glow of anticipation into her heart.

"Lucrezia, you are a cynic."

"What is a cinico, signora?"

"A Lucrezia. But you don't know your padrone. He won't forget us."

Lucrezia reddened. She feared she had perhaps said something that seemed
disrespectful.

"Oh, signora, there is not another like the padrone. Every one says so.
Ask Gaspare and Sebastiano. I only meant that--"

"I know. Well, to-day you will understand that all men are not forgetful,
when you eat your fish."

Lucrezia still looked very doubtful, but she said nothing more.

"There they are!" exclaimed Hermione.

She waved her hand and cried out. Life suddenly seemed quite different to
her. These moving figures peopled gloriously the desert waste, these
ringing voices filled with music the brooding silence of it. She murmured
to herself a verse of scripture, "Sorrow may endure for a night, but joy
cometh with the morning," and she realized for the first time how
absurdly sad and deserted she had been feeling, how unreasonably forlorn.
By her present joy she measured her past--not sorrow exactly; she could
not call it that--her past dreariness, and she said to herself with a
little shock almost of fear, "How terribly dependent I am!"

"Mamma mia!" cried Lucrezia, as another shout of laughter came up from
the ravine, "how merry and mad they are! They have had a good night's
fishing."

Hermione heard the laughter, but now it sounded a little harsh in her
ears.

"I wonder," she thought, as she leaned upon the terrace wall--"I wonder
if he has missed me at all? I wonder if men ever miss us as we miss
them?"

Her call, it seemed, had not been h