that detestable ceiling, in the gloom of the chilly room, her depression became almost desperation. She jumped up, and resolved to write her letter home. Antonio established her at the bureau in Signora Anna's room, and she began—
"It's pouring. I am in the lowest spirits."
But come! this was idiotic. Why distress her Mamma with useless lamentations?
"Is it not my own doing?" she thought, tearing the note-paper. "Who forced me to change my state, to leave my family, and my home? For the future I am alone. Alone! Even if I were to explain, no one would ever understand!"
Leaning against the desk, she philosophised bitterly.
"Have I the smallest right to complain? No. And there's no sense in complaining when the cause of discomfort is in oneself. My soul is sick; it's a plant torn from the place where it sprang; every little shock withers it. Why should I lament? It's useless. Nothing can cure me, not even Antonio's love. The rain will stop, the fine days will come, I shall have my own house, and needn't be bothered with any one's company; but shall I even then be happy? Who can tell? Yet, after all, what does it matter? One must just accept life as it is, and resign oneself, and try to live to oneself. I don't understand the mania for company. Isn't it possible to live alone? Isn't it better? What company so good as one's own? And," she concluded, "it won't last for ever. We've all got to die."
She took this for resignation, and decided to write a letter full of pious lies. But, searching the pigeon-holes for an envelope, she came upon Antonio's letters to his mother during the three months he had served on the Commission at C——e.
Curiosity prompted her to look into them.
In the beginning of the correspondence Antonio described the place with rapid touches, and praised the inhabitants, whom he found energetic, lively, quick-witted.
"I have established myself," he wrote, "in an excellent family, thoroughly honest and sensible. The father is school-master in a neighbouring village, but lives here that his own children may attend secondary schools. The boy Gabriele is smart, active, and ambitious. Gabriella, the girl, is very clever, and intends to be an authoress. The school-master (nick-named the guendol [spindle], because he's never quiet for a single moment) is an excellent fellow. He discourses of Raphael and Michaelangelo, making highly original criticisms. For instance, speaking of Raphael (whose surname he never omits), he says 'the painter of La Madonna delle Seggiole (plural), etc.'"
In a postscript to this letter Antonio added—
"The Master has suggested a marriage to me—a young lady of noble family, once very wealthy, now come down in the world—twenty-three—neither pretty nor ugly—clever—fortune, 30,000 lire."
In another letter Antonio boasted of tender regards from several young ladies in the neighbourhood, but said the Master still held to his idea.
"The Tagliamari are one of the best families in this part. They still have 200,000 lire to be divided into four parts. At present the elder daughter has 30,000. The Signora T—— is most distinguished widow of a noble who in his day ran through half-a-million. The Master paints the young lady as a model of wisdom and goodness. 'È fine, sa,' he says to me, 'fine, fine, fine!'[2] She has been educated at Parma in a school for ladies of rank. 'You ought to take her away from this,' he says, 'to Rome—that's her place.'"
"Poor old man," commented Antonio. "He imagines that I am a prince—I with my small berth at the Treasury!—fit to marry and carry off a young lady who is fine, fine, fine!"
"To be sure," he wrote in his letter of September 2nd, "30,000 lire are not to be despised; but I must first see the lady."
The next letter described the meeting with Regina on the banks of the Po, near her home.
"She is not beautiful. She has a muzzle like a cat; but she is very attractive, cultured, particularly intelligent. The Master must have talked to her of me, for she got red and looked at me in a shy sort of way. She asked if I was really private secretary to a princess. Evidently she would think that much more interesting than to be merely a junior clerk in the Treasury office!
"Yesterday I went to the Tagliamaris' villa. The mother is the most charming of women, a genuine great lady. She told me the whole story of her life, perhaps with intention, but in the most delicate way. She belongs herself to a distinguished family. Her husband was wealthy, but what she calls unlucky speculations, the floods of—80, and other misfortunes, completely ruined him——"
"What are you about, Regina?" asked Antonio, appearing at the door.
"Oh!" she cried, looking up, "I've discovered some most curious human documents!"
And she held up the letters. He flushed, and sprang to put them back in their pigeon-holes, then changed his mind and began to read them himself.
"Aren't you ashamed?" she said; "a 'signorina fine, fine, fine!' '30,000 lire not to be despised,' 'Private secretary to a princess more interesting in her eyes, etc., etc., etc.' You were horrid!"
"Read here! Read here!" said Antonio. "See what I say afterwards!"
But she got up and looked at herself in the glass.
"I declare it's true! I am like a cat!"
"Read here!" repeated Antonio, pursuing her, a letter in his hand.
"We'll read it later. Now I'm going to write home," she said, reseating herself at the bureau.
Antonio took all the letters and set himself to read them over, buried in a corner of the ottoman. Every now and then, while Regina wrote rapidly, he burst into exclamations and little laughs, then suddenly became serious, as if in the lively recollection of the last days passed at C——e he were living his happiness over again.
Later the pair presented themselves at Arduina's Apartment, where they were to dine. The authoress lived on the top floor of the palace in a small suite of rooms furnished in rather strange taste and pervaded by what seemed to Regina affected disorder.
Arduina came to meet her guests screaming with delight. She was dressed in a long white overall, her sleeves tucked up and displaying lean, yellow arms.
"Come in!" she said, hiding her hands behind her back; "give me a kiss, Regina!"
Regina kissed her without enthusiasm, and Antonio said—
"I've explained that to get time for writing you prepare dinner at 5 a.m. God only knows what sort of meal you'll give us!"
"Here's what will reassure you!" said Arduina, revealing floury hands. "I write easily, you know," she went on, "at any hour and in any place; so it's true, sometimes, when the inspiration comes I do sit down with a pen at a corner of the kitchen table. And I get so wrapped up in what I'm doing that the meat's apt to get burned. But what does it matter?" she added, laughing with her rather silly but apparently conceited laugh; "roast meat is no more than roast meat, and art is art. But come in; sit down; amuse yourself with these papers, dear. I'll be with you in a moment, and then you'll give me that information about female benevolence in Mantua."
"Leave her in peace," said Antonio, as before.
"Don't you interfere with me! There's no one cares for your wife so much as I do. Why,
