“No; she has not paid me yet for the bust.” “Who has not paid you?” “Signorina Di Bello.” “How do you know she will give you any money?” “Ah! I saw it in her eye. And did she not say, when I spoke of my poor marble--did she not say that perhaps it would not prove so poor, after all? Oh, she will pay, I am sure. How much? Ah! who can tell that? But surely it will be enough to take us back to Cardinali, and what more can we ask? There we shall be happy. No more shall you go to the mill, for have I not my house and workshop, and will not Genoa be glad again to buy my ten-inch Saint Peters?” “Ah! _si_. Genoa will be glad. And I? Shall I not take them to the Gallery of Cristoforo Colombo and sell them just as old Daniello did? By my faith, I think I shall bring home as much silver as ever he did, and more.” “_Si, si_; who would not buy of you, _angelo d’amore_?” He kissed her lips and fair tresses, and the women with their nurslings left the bench. Thus, and for hours, the exiles lived in the new-found bliss of their present while planning a joyous future. Over the buzz of the grimy, toil-bound multitude the notes of the distant band came to them vaguely--now in a fugitive creak, then in a faint rumble or detached crash. It was long after the music had died out, and the people had gone to their tenements, and the pale eye of night had peeped tardily over a zigzag line of low roofs, when Marianna said: “_Dio!_ So late! She will not let me in.” They walked to Casa Di Bello at a smart pace, and timidly she rang the bell, while Armando waited not many yards away. Instantly the door opened, and he saw the hand of Carolina reach forth, grasp his love by the shoulder, and jerk her into the house. CHAPTER XXIV TWO TROUBLESOME WEDDING GIFTS LOOKING down upon Genoa through the blue reaches of the upper crests is an Apennine peak which the people, high and low, call Our Lady of the Windows. Ever mantled in snow, and a fit emblem of icy virtue, she has for ages inspired a negative chord for that region’s lyres of passion. The princeling in his hillside palazzo sings of his dream lady--always an angel as fervid as the glacial Madonna is cold; the red waterman, in his moonlight barcarole, swears his love would melt that frozen heart. But she bears no kinship to this chronicle save that Signor Di Bello, on the afternoon of the pregnant Feast of Sunday, when all was primed for the wedding, thus addressed his sister, who sat by a front casement: “Ha! my Lady of the Windows, it is time to go and fetch my bride.”