Her rapture came to an end as raptures must, and she was again Ragna Valentini, pacing the long dining-room with its high vaulted ceiling, its solid early Renaissance furniture, the untidy remains of luncheon still littering the table, but she no longer felt the oppression of it all. It was as though a veil had been drawn aside disclosing a new landscape, or rather as though having toiled through hardship unspeakable to the uttermost depths of the Valley of Despondency, she saw before her the wondrous vision of sunlit peaks and the Promised Land beyond--no longer a mirage but a blessed actuality. All that she had to do was to enter. A light long extinguished came back to her eyes, she carried her head with a conscious air of resolution. The manservant entering, started as though at an apparition, so different was she from the reserved, patient mistress he had served. And a scene with the _Padrone_ had had this effect! With admirable self-control the man held his peace, though questions all but burst from his lips--your Italian servant is on a very familiar footing with the family he serves--but his eyes were less discreet, in fact they never left his mistress during the time he spent clearing the table and setting the room to rights, and it may be said that he in no way hastened the process. When he finally withdrew, it was to expatiate in the kitchen on the marvellous change come over the _Padrona_. "I said to myself, the Signora will require a glass of Marsala, for he was worse than usual to-day. _Mondo ladro!_ to have to live with a man like that! If it were not for the Signora who is an angel of goodness, I, for one,--" "That's so," assented the cook. "But _Assunta mia_, there she was, she who has looked like wilted grass ever since I came, as fresh as a daisy, with a colour like a sunset in her cheeks. _Accitempoli!_ I all but dropped my tray! To think that with a bella Signora like her, the _Padrone_ should--" He winked knowingly. "All men are pigs," opined the cook. "Some things are above the comprehension of females," returned Nando, loftily, his masculine vanity ruffled,--"But all the same--" He leisurely consumed the Marsala which he had found it unnecessary to offer Ragna, tilting back on the legs of his chair, alternately holding his glass up to the light to enjoy the clear amber colour, and appreciatively smacking his lips as he sipped. Assunta, the cook, her portly form arrayed in a blue apron, stood by the sink rinsing the dishes under the tap and standing them in the overhead rack to drip. A square of sunshine lay on the red brick floor, and Civetta, the cat, lay basking in it, luxuriously curling and uncurling her velvet paws, stretching her neck to lick an unruly patch of fur and blinking at her surroundings with lazy topaz eyes. Copper kettles and pans decorated the whitewashed walls; the red brick stove and the dresser were well scrubbed and tidy.