can sleep all to-morrow. It's going to rain," said his mother.
"Let us hope not."
"I expect it will."
"Bother the weather prophets!" said Regina.
At last the women were gone; and in an instant Antonio was by Regina's side, kissing her, leaning his face against her troubled one, and saying in his caressing voice—
"Cheer up; don't be so depressed! You shall just eat a mouthful and then get at once to bed. To-morrow we'll escape—we'll go out by ourselves. We won't let them bore us. Cheer up!"
He put his arm round her and drew her to the dining-room, humming a merry tune—
"Mousey doesn't care for cream,
Mousey wants to marry the Queen;
If the King won't let her go,
Mousey'll break his bones, you know."
But Regina had no smiles left.
Scarcely was she seated on one of the comfortless Vienna chairs which surrounded the overburdened table than she felt her back broken and her eyelids weighed down by the whole fatigue of the journey. Again she seemed in a bad dream, looking through a veil at a picture of vulgar figures. Yes, vulgar the face of her mother-in-law—fat, red, puffy, outlined by the hard line of hair, over-shiny and over-black for nature; vulgar that of Mario, which was much like his mother's, with the same small blue eyes, the same mouth hanging half-open as he breathed slowly and noisily; vulgar, again, the face of Gaspare—rosy all over, hairless below the shining line of his bald forehead; and that of Massimo, who was dandified but decadent, something like Antonio, but with long, reddish, oily hair and bold grey eyes. Claretta herself was vulgar; the very type of a bourgeois beauty. Without understanding why, Regina remembered the crowds half-seen at the passing stations and on the Roman platform; the faces now surrounding her stood out from the confusion of those unnoticed ones, but themselves belonged to the crowd, and were no better than the crowd. A whole world separated her from them.
Notwithstanding the hour and Antonio's promise of dispatch, the supper lasted an immense time. It was served by a strapping, fair-haired girl in a pink blouse, who never took her astonished eyes from the bride's face, and every moment tripped and stumbled, as if determined to break something.
This figure which came and went seemed the principal one of the picture. Every one watched the girl and talked to her. Signora Anna started every time she opened the door.
Even Antonio addressed her.
"Well, Marina, and how are all the sweethearts?" he asked; and added, indicating Regina, "are you satisfied? Which is the prettier, she or Signora Arduina?"
Marina blushed, giggled, ran away, and did not return.
Presently Gaspare rose gravely, threw his napkin over his shoulder, and went in search of her. An altercation was heard in the kitchen. Then Gaspare returned, wrathful and very red.
"Mother, the mutton is burnt!" he announced tragically; "you must go and see after it."
The old lady groaned, got up, went out, came back—and did not stay quiet for another moment!
"Mother!" implored Antonio, "do sit down!"
"Mother!" urged Gaspare, still wrathful, "go and look after her!"
"Oh, these servants!" said the mother-in-law, turning to Regina, "one shouldn't mention them, I know, but they're the ruin of families. I'll tell you afterwards——"
"It's one of the gravest of social problems," said Massimo, sarcastically, looking straight before him.
"But one can't live without servants," cried Gaspare.
"Yet the servants are the death of you?"
"Oh, I'll be the death of them if they don't do their business," said Gaspare, and they all laughed.
Notwithstanding the old lady's irruptions into the kitchen the courses were a long time coming. Talk grew animated. Massimo chattered with the cousin; Signora Anna expatiated to Signora Clara on the delinquencies of the maid.
"How are you getting on with your Gigione?" Antonio asked Gaspare; and his brother replied, abusing his chief as he had abused Marina.
"Did you get my last letter?" Arduina demanded of Regina, under cover of the general noise.
"Which?"
"The one in which I asked information about the state of private benevolence in Mantua."
"Oh, pray leave her in peace," interrupted Antonio testily.
Regina thought of her old home, of the beautiful picture seen through the window of the great dining-parlour, the woods, the silver river sparkling in the summer sunshine—all lost! The actual picture of the woods, and the painted picture above the chimneypiece, a river scene by Baratta, showing the green banks of the Parma, and white boats against a violet sky—all vanished—vanished for ever! Seated on this back-breaking chair, among all these people who chattered of vulgar things, dismay again invaded her soul, the dismay felt by the condemned at the thought of association with his fellow-prisoners. Antonio paid her little attention; he was sucked into the current of his brothers' talk and had become a stranger to her. Again he made some jest at Arduina's expense; the maid looked at the ladies and laughed. Indeed, they all laughed. Why did they laugh? Was happiness making Antonio cruel? His brother Mario—a man no longer young, who seldom spoke, but always reddened when he heard his thought expressed by somebody else—detested, as they all knew, his wife's scribbling mania. So Antonio persisted in questioning his sister-in-law about her newspaper, The Future of Woman.
"It has reached a circulation of three copies," said Massimo, "and it's clearly anxious to provoke quarrels, for it has printed a sonnet from a Calabrian paper without leave."
"My goodness! how witty you are!" cried Arduina, laughing, but her whole face expressed a vague terror.
Sor Mario, his eyes on his plate, grunted and munched like an angry bullock. There followed a perfect explosion of childish cruelty towards the poor creature, who, even to Regina, suggested a caricature.
"I've never succeeded in discovering the office of her paper," said Claretta; "one ought to be able to go there if only to find the editor."
"There are plenty of editors in the street," answered Arduina; "a girl like you could find one anywhere."
"I don't see the sense of that!" cried Gaspare.
"We never expect you to see the sense of anything."
"Come, show sense yourself!" interposed her husband, threatening her with his fork.
"Are you in the Woman Movement, Regina?" some one asked.
"I? No!" answered the bride, as if starting from a dream. Then, wishing to defend her sister-in-law, less out of pity for her than out of dislike to the brothers, she added, "Perhaps Arduina will convert me."
"Antonio! get out your stick!" cried Gaspare, and again they
