"But I assure you," said the nurse, in that sharp, quick, earsplitting tone in which the old women of the South are more than a match for those of the North,--"but I assure you, my darling, that there is not a finer cavalier in all Naples, nor a more beautiful, than this Inglese; and I am told that all the Inglesi are much richer than they seem. Though they have no trees in their country, poor people, and instead of twenty- four they have only twelve hours to the day, yet I hear, cospetto! that they shoe their horses with steak; and since they cannot (the poor heretics!) turn grapes into wine, for they have no grapes, they turn gold into physic, and take a glass or two of pistoles whenever they are troubled with the colic. But you don't hear me! Little pupil of my eyes, you don't hear me!" "Gionetta, is he not god-like?" "Sancta Maria! he is handsome, bellissimo; and when you are his wife,-- for they say these English are never satisfied unless they marry--" "Wife! English! Whom are you talking of?" "Why, the young English signor, to be sure." "Chut! I thought you spoke of Zicci." "Oh! Signor Zicci is very rich and very generous; but he wants to be your cavalier, not your husband. I see that,--leave me alone. When you are married, then you will see how amiable Signor Zicci will be. Oh, per fede! but he will be as close to your husband as the yolk to the white; that he will. "Silence, Gionetta! How wretched I am to have no one else to speak to-- to advise me. Oh, beautiful sun!" and the girl pressed her hand to her heart with wild energy, "why do you light every spot but this? Dark, dark! And a little while ago I was so calm, so innocent, so gay. I did not hate you then, Gionetta, hateful as your talk was; I hate you now. Go in; leave me alone--leave me." "And indeed it is time I should leave you, for the polenta will be spoiled, and you have eaten nothing all day. If you don't eat you will lose your beauty, my darling, and then nobody will care for you. Nobody cares for us when we grow ugly,--I know that; and then you must, like old Gionetta, get some Isabel of your own to spoil. I'll go and see to the polenta." "Since I have known this man," said the actress, half aloud, "since his dark eyes have fascinated me, I am no longer the same. I long to escape from myself,--to glide with the sunbeam over the hill-tops; to become something that is not of earth. Is it, indeed, that he is a sorcerer, as I have heard? Phantoms float before me at night, and a fluttering like the wing of a bird within my heart seems as if the spirit were terrified, and would break its cage." While murmuring these incoherent rhapsodies, a step that she did not hear approached the actress, and a light hand touched her arm. "Isabella! carissima! Isabella!"