"But look here!" she began, clapping her hands and imitating her husband's mock-heroic tone. However she was no longer merry. A sweet vision had melted her heart. She saw her mother--her dear, delicate mother, her pretty sister, her youngest brother, her darling, all starting for the nine o'clock Mass. The house on the river-bank was deserted. It stood among poplar-trees veiled in mist, like a fancy house in the background of a stage picture. Inside a fire burned on the great hearth, the black cat sat contemplating the flames, the Baratta painting was illuminated with grey and rosy tints which gave it a suggestive relief. The sound of a bell, singularly pure in tone, was dying on the still air in metallic vibrations; the northern landscape, with the great river winding along like an immense blue vein in the whiteness of that snowy plain, was spread out under the vaporous heaven. Silence--mysterious immensity--the mist of dream! But this nostalgic vision, which gave her a melancholy pleasure seen thus under the caresses of him for whom she had abandoned all, was snatched from her by the entrance of Signora Anna. The old lady, round and enormous in her red flannel dressing-gown, her hair already dressed, and blacker and oilier than yesterday, advanced with circumspection, puffing and panting as was her wont. Regina blushed, removed her arms from Antonio's neck, and covered herself hastily. "Why so?" said the young man, taking the coverlet away, "show your lovely little arms at once! Look, mother! see how white my Regina is!" "No, no! let me alone!" said the girl, hiding under the sheet. But the old lady came nearer, helped Antonio to unbutton the wrist of Regina's jacket, and passed an approving finger over the bride's white and child-like arm. "Upon my word!" she exclaimed, "you are really lovely!" "Oh, dear me! Do please let me alone!" said Regina, flattered all the same. "Isn't she lovely? Isn't she?" insisted Antonio, kissing the fair arms. "Lovely! Very well made indeed! _Brava!_" said the mother-in-law, almost as if Regina had made herself. "And indeed I was white and shapely enough myself once," she went on; "now I'm an old woman, but in my day I was very much admired, I assure you!" "Well really!" thought Regina, looking at her mother-in-law's thick hands, brown, chapped, smelling of garlic, and very unlike the blue-veined whiteness of her own delicate members. "Won't you have some coffee? Do you take it with milk? I'll go and get the coffee and the milk--a little scalded cream--whipped eggs?" "For pity's sake!" cried Regina. "No, thank you, I don't want anything." "Get up! Get up!" said Antonio, "the rain's stopping. Let's go out!"