‘Now is my time,’ said Minna to herself. ‘I should be a criminal if I were to hesitate any longer;’ and with that, after casting one hasty look towards Fulvia, she left the room, and sped along the corridors as fast as she could go till she came to Signora Dietrich’s room. She knocked loudly and unceremoniously on the door, opened it and confronted the signora, who was writing at a table, and who had just lifted her head to see what the interruption was. ‘Signora, your daughter is ill. She is fainting. She is in my room. You had better come to her at once!’ said Minna; and without waiting for a reply, she flew back to her own quarters, where she found Fulvia exactly as she had left her. Scarce two minutes had passed since she had left the room. She scarcely had time to dash some water on the girl’s face, when a step behind her--a light but audible footstep--warned her that Signora Dietrich was in the room. She closed the door with deliberation, came up to the couch, and looked upon the rigid form of her daughter. ‘What is all this?’ she asked, but without any excitement or irritation in her manner. ‘What has she been doing? She appeared quite well when we came in at four o’clock.’ ‘No--she is not well. No one is, or can be well, who is so unhappy as she is,’ replied Minna openly. ‘She is not unhappy,’ replied the signora, still calmly and deliberately. ‘She is fanciful, she is ignorant, and she is young. She has always been so much petted and indulged. It is constantly the case. She thinks, before she is seventeen, that she knows better than her mother, who is forty-seven, what is for her good and happiness. I thought exactly the same when my mother married me to Signor Dietrich.’ She was undoing Fulvia’s dress, with skilful and not unkindly hands; but there was no pity, no sympathy, no unbending in her attitude. ‘And do you feel now that you were wrong, and that your mother was right?’ asked Minna, beside herself. Signora Dietrich paused for a moment in her operations, and looked Minna full in the face. ‘Certainly I do,’ she replied, and fell to work again. ‘A lie,’ said Minna to herself. ‘She did not even get material prosperity from the bargain.’ ‘Did you suffer thus?’ she asked again, and her eyes once more fell upon Fulvia’s white, rigid, unconscious face. ‘Girls are hysterical,’ was the signora’s reply. ‘There, she is better now. She was tired. We have had a busy day. I must tell Marchmont that she must keep quiet to-morrow.’ ‘I should advise you to keep her out of his way as much as possible for the next three weeks, if you wish your plan to be accomplished. She has had about as much as she can bear.’ ‘You are extremely kind, thus to interest yourself in my poor affairs.’ said the signora blandly, in her full musical tones. ‘I am glad to have this opportunity of thanking you for your disinterested kindness.’