For Pietro was a wild, passionate youth, with something of the savage about him, and as Lucia disliked him even more than her other suitors, she had determined to stay at home this afternoon for fear she should meet him at Palene and be exposed to his vehement importunities. She had therefore been alone for some hours; but now she heard a distant sound of voices, laughing and chattering. The villagers were coming back, and were climbing the rocky pathway which led to their homes, and soon the little street was all alive again. At the first sound of their approach, Lucia had retreated into the cottage, and set about warming up the polenta for her mother; and as she stood in the large kitchen, with the blaze from the fire lighting up her grave, madonna-like face, this personage came in. She was an old, grey-haired woman, but there was an almost wild glare in her small, sharp eyes, as she glanced angrily at the girl. “What a shame it is!” she cried, pulling off her red silk neck-kerchief and kicking away a chair. “The idea of my being the only woman to have an unmarried daughter! Here I am pointed at by every one! I’m the mother of the ‘crazy girl,’ forsooth, and I can’t show my face anywhere!” “Bah!”said Lucia, without looking up from the fire; “where can’t you show your face?” “Why, neither in the village nor in the whole country round,”returned the old woman, passionately. “Don’t you trouble yourself about any of their gossip, mother; and don’t force me to marry, for I can’t take any of the young men about here,” said Lucia, calmly. “Forced you will be, sooner or later,” returned her mother. “One of them will cut off your hair, and then you know you must marry him, whether you like it or not,” she added dolefully. “Shame on the men here, then!” exclaimed Lucia, with flaming eyes. “Shame on any man who forces a woman to marry him by such means! lying in wait to cut off her hair, and then making a show of it in the village until the poor thing is obliged to marry the thief, or she will be forever disgraced and never get another husband! Shame on men who win their wives in this fashion!” “Ah, well! it has been the taming of a good many obstinate girls for all that, and they are happy enough now. Look at Emilia Mantori and Teresina,”continued the mother; “they held out for a couple of years, and then one fine day they lost their plaits! They came back from the fields with their hair cut short; the boys hooted them down the street, and three weeks later there were two merry weddings, and now it is all as right as can be!” “I hope that will never be my fate, mother,”said Lucia; “never!” and she clenched her brown hand with its long, shapely fingers, while all the blood left her lips. “If people behave like brigands, they may expect to be treated like brigands. Any one who lays a finger on my hair will have to look out for himself, as all the ruffians about here know full well, and so they keep their distance.”