"Why have you stolen my papa's ring?" As she spoke, she pointed with her tiny finger at a beautiful diamond ring, mounted in the old style, which her mother had given me several days before, and which I had been childish enough to accept; then she turned and, standing on tiptoe, placed her finger on one of the fingers in the portrait which was adorned with the same ring accurately copied; and I discovered that the imprudent Bianca had presented her gondolier with one of her husband's most valuable family jewels. The blood rose in my cheeks, as I received from that child a lesson which disgusted me more than ever with ill-gotten wealth. I smiled and handed her the ring: "Your mamma dropped it off her finger," I said, "and I found it just now in the gondola." "I will take it to her," said the child, snatching rather than taking it from my hand. She ran away, leaving her doll on the floor. I picked up the plaything to make sure of a little circumstance which I had often noticed before. Alezia was in the habit of running a long pin through the heart of every doll she owned, and sometimes she would sit for hours at a time, absorbed in the profound and silent pleasure of that strange amusement. In the evening Mandola came to my room. He seemed awkward and embarrassed. He had much to say to me, but he could not find a word. His expression was so curious that I roared with laughter. "You are doing wrong, Nello," he said with a pained look on his face; "I am your friend; you are doing wrong!" He turned to go, but I ran after him and tried to make him explain himself; it was impossible. I saw that his heart was full of sage reflections and good advice; but he lacked words in which to express himself, and all his abortive sentences, in his patois in which all languages were mingled, ended with these words: "_E molto delica, delicatissimo._" At last I succeeded in making out that the rumor of my approaching marriage to the signora was current in the house. A few impatient words which some one had heard her say to Salomé were sufficient to put that rumor in circulation. The signora had said just this, speaking of me: "The time is not far away when you will take orders from him instead of giving him orders."--I obstinately denied that these words had any such meaning, and pretended that I did not understand them at all. "Very good," said Mandola; "that's the answer you ought to make, even to me, although I am your friend. But I have eyes of my own; I don't ask you any questions, I never have done it, Nello! but I came to warn you that you must be prudent. The Aldinis are just looking for an excuse for taking the guardianship of Signora Alezia away from the signora, and she will die of grief if they take her child away from her." "What do you say?" I cried; "what? they will take her daughter away because of me?" "If you were to marry her, certainly," replied the worthy gondolier; "_otherwise_--as there are some things that can't be proved,--"