"Domenico Serone was the only one who kept aloof from our captain, would get up as soon as ever he saw him enter the cafe, and pass him by in the street as a thief does the gallows. No one wondered though at this, for to see himself eclipsed by a foreigner--he who was accustomed to be cock of the walk--must naturally have mortified him. It never even occurred to me that Erminia might have something to do with it. I had been present when Signor Gustavo met the fair creature for the first time. 'Now look here, _amico mio_,' I had said, 'never--if only you will honestly admit it, never have you seen anything like her in either of the Indies, Turkey, or Golconda.' But he after a mere glance, without a look of surprise, merely said, 'Hum!' biting his blonde moustache so hard, you heard the crunching of the hair. 'Not amiss, Sor Angelo, not amiss indeed.' '_Possareddio_,' said I to myself, 'this is the only man who can look without blinking at the sun.' It crossed me that I would engage Erminia in conversation, that he might see more of her, and be punished for his cold-blooded 'not amiss,' by falling over head and ears into love. But she, usually so calm and unembarrassed when she met any one, turned strangely red, and hurried away, so that I thought at once, 'Hollo! at length her hour has struck,' but I said not a word, and the meeting went out of my head. "But about a week later, I stood before my shop-door in the twilight deciphering a letter I had just received, in which a friend in Rome told me he had read aloud my sonnets at a meeting of a poetical society--the 'Arcadia'--and that amidst general approval I had been elected honorary member, which so surprised and pleased me, that for the moment I was not aware of what was going on about me, till I heard _Il Rosso's_ voice so loud and threatening that it woke me out of all my cogitations. Looking up I saw him standing by the fountain not ten yards from my door, pale as a corpse, and quite unlike the smart fellow he used to be, and not far from where he was,--the pitcher that she had intended to fill left standing on the edge of the fountain, and her left hand pressing her side,--stood Erminia, and as it happened no one else was in sight. I wondered what both could be about, as they had avoided each other for months past. But _Il Rosso_ did not keep me long in suspense. 'Hear me, Erminia,' he said, as though he were reading out a sentence of death to some convicted criminal in the hearing of all the world: 'It is lucky that we have met here. True we have no longer any dealings with each other, but as I once loved you, even though you trampled my love under your feet, I would still warn you. Take heed to yourself, Erminia, and be careful what you do. I know one who has sworn your death if any stranger ever carries off what you have refused to your own people; and if we are not good enough to make you an honourable wife, we are at least men enough to help a lost girl out of