A half decade had gone by since the Wednesday of Ashes when the brother and sister patched up the quarrel that had separated them in their poorer days and she returned to the air of laity. But the sacerdotal brand would not wear off, nor did she wish it to. In the conduct of the household her churchly notions had free scope enough, but applied in censorship of her brother’s life they met with dreary contempt. To no purpose did she preach when Mulberry buzzed with the latest story of his gallantries, for his ready argument was always an eloquent “_Ma che!_” and an unanswerable shrug of the shoulders. In vain did she wait up, often from compline to prime, that she might shame him when he came home aglow with bumpers of divers vintage. It was after a certain rubicund night at the Caffè of the Three Gardens that he cut short her usual sermon with a roaring manifesto against church and state and a declaration of personal liberty for all time. “Snakes of purgatory!” he had remarked in conclusion, one foot on the staircase. “Am I not a man? If you want priests, go to the parish house, where you belong. Once a priest always a priest.” With this taunt, meant to be a parting one, he toddled up to bed, but, reaching the landing, stopped and called back: “If you don’t leave me alone, I’ll bring a wife here.” From that time, which was two years before Bertino’s arrival, she gave up her nocturnal vigils, and without let or hindrance the signore feasted and drank with boon comrades, and cracked walnuts on his head with an empty bottle--a feat for which he was justly renowned in all the _caffès_ of the quarter. The lowering peril of a wife in the house had set her to thinking as she had never thought before on this dire possibility. Her brother’s nonconformity was a flaw in her sceptre, but she knew that a wife meant the utter collapse of her sovereignty in Casa Di Bello. Wherefore she resolved to abide by the lesser evil, and bend her strength to warding off the greater. Thus it befell that with the accession of Bertino to the family she was not ill content. The coming of a man to the board imparted no misgiving. What her soul dreaded and her wits had guarded against was the advent of a woman. And she felicitated herself that no wife had succeeded in crossing the threshold. To her ever-watchful eye, she fondly believed, was due the blessing of her brother’s continuance in the path of bachelorhood, despite the caps that were set for him on every bush. The first families of the Calabriani, the Siciliani, and the Napolitani, along with the flower of the Genovesi, the Milanesi, and the Torinesi, had in turn put forth their famous beauties as candidates for his hand and grocery store. But they all had been driven from the Rubicon, and at present there was no pretender in the field. Had there been she would have known it, as she knew of all the other marital campaigns, through Angelica, who went to market daily and kept in touch with Sara the