Next morning it was more cheerful in the great _salone_; there was light, at least, which was much, and I think there was sunshine; but the gentle reader will forgive me if I confess that I have forgotten whether the Palazzo Scaramucci was on the sunny or the shady side. At all events, there was daylight, and a blue, clear, shining sky, and the sight of sunshine outside if not its actual presence. When Mrs. Drainham, who was really concerned about the girl, came to see her before twelve next morning, she found her seated by the same little table which had held her lamp on the previous night, with a little dish of polenta before her, and again the dry brown bread and the small flask of wine. It seemed the strangest, most distasteful breakfast to the Englishwoman. “Oh, my dear,” she cried, “do send away that mess, and have a nice cup of tea. Wouldn’t you enjoy a nice cup of tea? If you will come with me, my maid will make you one directly--and perhaps an egg and a little delicate bread and butter. I don’t wonder that you have no appetite, my poor child.” “I like polenta,” said Innocent, playing with her spoon, “and I don’t like tea.” This seemed immoral to Mrs. Drainham. “If you go to England, my dear, you must not say you have been in the habit of having wine for breakfast,” she said, “It would be thought so very strange for a young girl.” Innocent made no immediate answer. With a perverse impulse she poured out a little of the nostralé wine, the commonest and cheapest, and diluted it with water. I do not, I confess, think it was an attractive beverage. “Probably I shall never be in England,” she said in a very low tone. “Oh, you must go to England; that is one thing there can be no doubt of. What are you to do here, poor child? Friends have been raised up to you here, but it is not likely that people who are not connected with you would continue--and the apartment, you know,” continued Mrs. Drainham, in her eagerness to prove what was self-apparent, “must be let. The marchese is very poor, and he could not be expected to lie out of his money, and Niccolo must find another situation. Everything, in short, is at a standstill until you go away.” Something hot rushed to the girl’s eyes--but if they were tears it was so unusual to shed them, that they rushed back again after an ineffectual effort to get forth. She made no answer. She had learned ere now, young as she was, the benefit of taking refuge in silence. Mrs. Drainham had drawn a chair near her, and sat looking at her, with eyes full of a curiosity not unmixed with disapproval. Mrs. Drainham, in short, disapproved of everything about her--her loose hair, her odd dress, her old velvet cloak, even the polenta on the tray before her, and the coloured water she was drinking. “What will they do with her in England?” she asked herself in dismay; but then _her_ responsibility, at least, would be over, and her mind relieved. “You have never been at school, my dear, I suppose?” “No.”