“Never!” replied the Baron, after the fashion of lovers; “you are the one only woman who could never tire me! You are unlike all the rest.” “So you _say!_” returned Hannah. “But with regard to my husband--he is very despondent, you tell me?” “Terribly so! He frightens me! Do all you can to cheer him, Hannah.” “And he is likely to attempt his own life?” “O! no! no! I hope not, most sincerely! But it will be as well to keep all dangerous articles, such as razors, etc., out of his reach, until his fit has passed away.” “_Che sarà, sarà!_” murmured Hannah, languidly. Von Steinberg started again. Had her lips really uttered Italian words, and with a foreign accent. “You frighten me sometimes,” he said, with a gasp. “Where on earth did you pick up that Italian proverb? We shall have you talking Greek next.” “Is not the Professor Italian?” replied the girl. “Am I always to listen and never to learn? What a fool you must take me for?” “I take you for the sharpest woman I ever met in my life,” exclaimed the Baron, as he kissed the large hand which he still retained in his. “And now I must go, as I have an appointment at one. Good-bye! Think a great deal of what I have said to you, Hannah--and _think a little of me!_” His eyes said more than his words, as he walked hastily out of the Cottage, as if afraid to trust himself any longer in her presence. Hannah looked after him lazily. “He will be mine, when I choose it,” she said to herself, “and it may not be long first! Ah! to have that house and all its contents placed at my feet, as a free-will offering! I should feel as if I were in Heaven!” She rose slowly from her chair, for Hannah had become very lazy in those days, and putting on her walking things, left the Cottage also. When she returned, she found the Professor had reached home before her. It was one of the days on which he had his afternoon to himself. Hannah was well pleased with the turn her fortunes seemed to be taking. She was disposed to be amiable, but Ricardo had already been too deeply wounded, and received her advances with repugnance. “Leave me alone!” he said, testily, “I require none of your attentions! I suppose my friend Von Steinberg has been talking to you, and you feel ashamed that he should have heard of your bad conduct. But I told him all! There is no need for me to conceal anything. “He saw you with me first--an ungainly, ignorant, uncouth clod of the earth--they were the very words he used with regard to you--and he knows what I did, in raising you to the position of my wife! He prayed and implored me to pause and consider what I was doing before I brought disgrace on my name and my birth and my family connections, by linking myself to a maid-of-all-work. But I was mad--I wouldn’t listen to him. Had I done so, I should have been spared the awful shame you have put me to, since! I married you, because I believed you to be a simple, amiable, kind-hearted girl----”