"Oh, nurse!" cried Aveline. "Not a word against Italy. It is the only country to enjoy and improve life. If it were not that this is our home, I could have spent my life at Naples, or--Sorrento." "You were very fond of Sorrento," said Mrs. Fitzpatrick, looking inquiringly at her daughter. "Yes. That is, I was tired of it at last. It was a great relief to go on to Milan, there is something in the sea-side that--a monotony I mean--after--" "Yet, you could have spent your life there;" said Mrs. Fitzpatrick in a subdued tone. "In Italy, mamma? At any place in Italy. It is not the spot, but the thin warm air that makes me feel so full of life. Oh, dear nurse, you do look so handsome. You cannot think how ugly the old Italian women are, with their thick brown skins and deep wrinkles, and coarse grizzled hair. English people have certainly a more delicate texture. Even I was thought pretty in Italy." "Pretty in Italy!" said the old lady indignantly. "I fancy, Miss Aveline, the gentlemen must be much changed since my time, if you are not thought pretty anywhere." "Oh, hush, nurse!" said Aveline lifting up her finger. "It is only safe to tell little children they are pretty. Grown up ones are too ready to believe it." "It is little matter here, Miss Aveline," said the old woman. "You have no neighbours." "No neighbours, nurse? I was but waiting until we had finished tea to ask you about them all. How is the good old widow by the church--and Mrs. Wood, the baker--and young Mrs. Wood at the post-office? And Harding, the carpenter--and the fisherman's family on the other side of the cliff? Is little Jane as pretty as ever? Of course not. Her father I know has cut all her curls off, as he always does, and she is beginning to lose her teeth; so that she will not be fit to look at for these ten years." While she was talking on in this lively manner, the old woman kept her eyes fixed on her face with a serious and anxious expression. Aveline was fearfully thin; her hands, which she used in speaking, more than an English woman, were almost transparent; and from fatigue, the blue veins had risen over them in every direction. The colour in her cheeks was fixed like a bright spot of rouge under each eye, giving a brilliancy that was almost fierce in its expression to eyes that were dark as night, and remarkable for their size. Mrs. Fitzpatrick, who followed the nurse's looks with an eagerness that she could scarcely repress, caught her eye and remained silent, fixing her gaze upon the old woman's countenance with an intensity that she could hardly sustain. It seemed as if she ardently desired to read the nurse's opinion of her child, but was equally anxious that she should not then express it. "Well, nurse," said Aveline, "what news? I hope all these good people are not dead, that you keep such a profound silence upon their proceedings."