"We are not rich yet, but we can be. It's the first step, which is everything, my dear! Our five shares are each worth 1200 _lire_. They may go up even higher, but I intend to sell out to-morrow. Half the money I shall give to you; with the other half I'll make another venture. Fortune, it seems, is only a matter of will. But you mustn't be frightened!" he ended, for Regina had turned pale. "Why did you never tell me about it?" "What was the use? Suppose the shares had gone down?" As on that former evening, which rose obstinately before Regina's memory, the maid interrupted by announcing dinner, and the young pair went into the next room. By the lamp-light Antonio again noticed Regina's pallor, but he jested. "Don't fly away on the wings of Pegasus!" They talked a little of the morality and the opportunities of speculation, of risks and lotteries. "Nonsense!" said Antonio. "All life is a lottery. We must risk something or die. And now we'll go out for our walk." * * * * * Next day he sold the shares, after having shown them to Regina, and gave her 3000 _lire_. She put 2000 in the savings bank; with the rest she bought furniture, and provided for the birth and christening of her baby. "Perhaps I shall die," she said, in the last days of waiting. "You'll see that now, just when we've got a little luck, I shall die." "Don't talk nonsense," said Antonio, almost angry. She did not die, but she gave to the light a miserable little being, its life hanging by a thread, a baby like a kitten, ill-formed, ill-coloured, with an enormous head. When she first saw this little misery she wept with disappointment and repugnance. "If it would only die!" she mourned, cruelly. "Why oh! why have I given it life!" "Young lady," she was answered by the nurse, a peasant woman, like a statue, with a bronze face in an aureole formed by a turquoise head ornament, "leave the infant to me. You have brought her into the world, and now you have no more to do. Leave her to me, _Signurì_." Regina appeared to have little confidence, so the big woman was offended. She sulked, she quarrelled with the servant, who insisted the baby was dying. Next day she fell out with Marianna, who had come to inquire for Regina, and made the remark that the child seemed a kitten. "Just let her grow a bit," cried the indignant peasant, "and she'll be clawing at you! Little Miss Catharine may be like a kitten, but you're for all the world like a rat!" * * * * *