The compliment oblique is almost always sure to go deeper than the direct; and good Tita, though she had long lost any external claims to the title of a charming creature, included herself comfortably in the general category, and felt her heart open towards her companion. "No, no," she answered, "she is not cold--to him, at least; and how should she be, when she scarcely ever saw a young man before? He is not so bad looking either, and a kind heart too; and as for whimsies, dear child, she has none, and never had. She lay in my arms when she was two years old, and that is sixteen years since." "Upon my life, the old gentleman must have taken to matrimony late in life, to have a daughter of eighteen, when he is eighty," said Austin Jute, laughing. The shot took effect. "His daughter, you foolish knave!" cried the old lady, "she is not his daughter!--His daughter's daughter, if you will." "Well, there would be no great harm in it, if she were his daughter," answered Jute; "so you need not look so angry, my dear; many a man marries at sixty for the consolation of life, or at least of the little bit of life that remains. Better late than never, men say. I would rather come in at the end of the dinner than see no dinner at all. It is never too dark to see one's way, if one has but a lantern; and if we have gone on wrong from the beginning, why should we not try to get right at the end?--And so the young lady's name is not Manucci, after all?" "Her mother's was," answered Tita. "Poor thing, I remember her well. When she gave the child into my hands," she said, "Take care of her, Tita, for she will soon have no mother to do so, and no father has she ever known." "Oh, ho!" said Austin Jute, with a peculiar expression of countenance; but the old woman's black eyes flashed fire. "Out, knave!" she said, without allowing him to finish the sentence; "would you slander a saint in heaven?" The next moment, however, her face resumed its ordinary expression, and she said, "I spoke foolishly. I should have told you, the babe's father died on the day that she was born. The mother never held her head up after; and she kept her word with me too truly; for scarcely four months were gone by, ere we laid her in Campo Santo." "Poor thing!" said Austin Jute, in so natural a tone of pity, that all remains of anger were banished from Tita's heart. "How did the lady's husband die? Was it in battle or of disease?" "By the axe, young man--by the axe," replied Tita, sharply; "a plaything with which people in your country sport even more than we do here in Italy--at least I have heard so; for I know nothing of any other land but my own; but I have heard the Signor say that there has been sufficient innocent blood shed upon the scaffold in England and Scotland to bring down a curse upon the country."