One morning as he sat idle in his dismantled studio, Marina came to tell him that an old woman, waiting at the door below, wished to speak with him. “Well, let her come up,” said Ferris wearily, and presently Marina returned with a very ill-favored beldam, who stared hard at him while he frowningly puzzled himself as to where he had seen that malign visage before. “Well?” he said harshly. “I come,” answered the old woman, “on the part of Don Ippolito Rondinelli, who desires so much to see your excellency.” Ferris made no response, while the old woman knotted the fringe of her shawl with quaking hands, and presently added with a tenderness in her voice which oddly discorded with the hardness of her face: “He has been very sick, poor thing, with a fever; but now he is in his senses again, and the doctors say he will get well. I hope so. But he is still very weak. He tried to write two lines to you, but he had not the strength; so he bade me bring you this word: That he had something to say which it greatly concerned you to hear, and that he prayed you to forgive his not coming to revere you, for it was impossible, and that you should have the goodness to do him this favor, to come to find him the quickest you could.” The old woman wiped her eyes with the corner of her shawl, and her chin wobbled pathetically while she shot a glance of baleful dislike at Ferris, who answered after a long dull stare at her, “Tell him I’ll come.” He did not believe that Don Ippolito could tell him anything that greatly concerned him; but he was worn out with going round in the same circle of conjecture, and so far as he could be glad, he was glad of this chance to face his calamity. He would go, but not at once; he would think it over; he would go to-morrow, when he had got some grasp of the matter. The old woman lingered. “Tell him I’ll come,” repeated Ferris impatiently. “A thousand excuses; but my poor master has been very sick. The doctors say he will get well. I hope so. But he is very weak indeed; a little shock, a little disappointment.... Is the signore very, _very_ much occupied this morning? He greatly desired,--he prayed that if such a thing were possible in the goodness of your excellency .... But I am offending the signore!” “What do you want?” demanded Ferris. The old wretch set up a pitiful whimper, and tried to possess herself of his hand; she kissed his coat-sleeve instead. “That you will return with me,” she besought him. “Oh, I’ll go!” groaned the painter. “I might as well go first as last,” he added in English. “There, stop that! Enough, enough, I tell you! Didn’t I say I was going with you?” he cried to the old woman. “God bless you!” she mumbled, and set off before him down the stairs and out of the door. She looked so miserably old and weary that he called a gondola to his landing and made her get into it with him.