Diana has come! He kept saying it to himself all the way back to his lodging, trying to harden the soft syllables in the English way--then melting, softening over them, taking them back to his own tongue. The moon was large in the sky, stooping out of the blue, wondering at him--she, too, who was Diana. He laughed to himself softly, and then--strange!--felt his eyes full of tears. Why, in the name of every sylvan goddess?--because an English lady whom he had never seen before had suddenly appeared in the big, dim, painted room, where her country-people were staying--the most natural of incidents. What could he do but laugh at himself thus suddenly startled into--sentiment. Yes, that was the word--a foolish word, meaning a foolish thing. But why that filling of the eyes? He was an Anglo-maniac, and it vexed him to feel how southern he was, how unrestrained, overcome in that foolish Italian way by feeling. An Englishman would not have been capable of these absurd tears. And as he pursued his way in the moonlight all the length of the Lung’ Arno the bells began to strike their prolonged Italian twenty-two hours, for it was ten o’clock: and every chime all over the city (for need I say every clock was a little behind its brother?), prolonging the twenty-two into half a hundred, struck out the same sound that was in his heart: Di--ana--Diana--Diana! She had come--she whom no one had heard of till to-day. CHAPTER IV. THE TWO LITTLE WOMEN. “So you have been happy,” said Miss Trelawny. She was in her room at her hotel, lying upon a sofa, not because of fatigue so much as to please the two little women who were fluttering about her, and to whom it was a matter of conventional necessity, that having just “come off a journey,” a lady ought to be fatigued and should “lie down.” Diana, in her perfect health and vigour, had thrown off all her tiredness in a night’s rest; but Mrs. Norton did not think this possible, and was doubtful even whether it was right. “Oh, very happy,” said Sophy; “everybody has been kind to us. We have had the most delightful parties--little dances even: and almost everybody has a reception one night in the week. And it is so beautiful! and all the churches and things to go and see; and the alabaster shops: and Mr. Pandolfini has been so kind.” “Yes, Diana, it has been very nice indeed,” said her aunt; “everybody is kind, as Sophy says. So interested in her, seeing that she was delicate----” “Oh, auntie, I am not delicate now--my cough is quite, _quite_ gone. I feel as if I could do anything. Fancy, Diana, Mr. Pandolfini took us all over the Cathedral and up the Leaning Tower, and to see everything; and then there was a little impromptu dance at the Winthrops--Americans, you know--and I danced--I danced with _him alone_ four dances. I was quite ashamed of myself----” “Is Mr. Pandolfini _him alone_?” said Diana, laughing; “but what does all this mean? For I thought Mrs. Hunstanton said there was no society in Pisa----”