WHEN the fractured shin bone had been set by a surgeon from Genoa, and Carolina had passed a day and a night in sullen rebellion at fate, she asked for Marianna. “She is at the mill, dear cousin,” answered Serafina. “What mill?” “The straw mill, where she is a plaiter.” “Let her leave it and come to me.” “But she gains ten _soldi_ a day. How shall we live if we give up our work?” “I will make up the ten _soldi_. Bid her come.” So the next dawn did not find Marianna hastening with lunch hamper down the path through the fir thicket toward the mill in the gorge. But Armando was at the spot where he met her every morning on her way to work. And while he watched and worried under the alders, whose boles the torrent splashed, Marianna stood at the bedside of Aunt Carolina. At daybreak she had entered the room softly, and found the woman from America awake. “I have been waiting for you,” she said faintly. “In the night I remembered a packet that Bertino gave me for some one in Cardinali--a Signor Corrini. It is there, in the bag. Take it out, and deliver it to whom it belongs.” “Signor Corrini! Armando!” cried the girl. “I will carry it to him at once.” She started for the door. “Armando is your _amante_?” “_Si_, aunt.” She blushed, and left the room, closing the door gently. “And I the bearer of a message to him! O Maria! what penance more? All fasts kept, aves and paternosters said faithfully, and my reward--a broken leg!” Marianna lost no time in delivering the precious missive to Armando, whom she found waiting in the gorge at the wonted place. Without stopping to answer his anxious inquiries, she placed the fateful packet in his hands. “From Bertino,” she said. “Ah, joy!” he cried, tearing open the envelope. “What I have waited for so long! Surely it is the model for my great work, for the bust that shall make me famous in America. Bones of St. George!” He had taken out the portrait of Juno, and stood glaring at it. “She has a nose,” Marianna remarked. “True,” said Armando thoughtfully. “I wonder if this is American beauty.” Then he began reading the letter aloud. At the part that told him it was a portrait of the wife of the President of the United States he leaped for gladness, and Marianna started away to tell all the village. Armando caught her arm. “Not a word!” he said; “not a word until the work is done--nay, until it is delivered to her Majesty La Presidentessa.”