Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2. F. Marion Crawford

handles, which they use to-day.

      Annetta started, as she heard Dalrymple's tread upon the stone steps of the staircase, but she recovered herself instantly, gave a finishing touch to the table, rubbed the back of her head quickly once more, and met him with a smile.

      "Is the beefsteak of mutton ready?" inquired the Scotchman, cheerfully, with his extraordinary accent.

      Annetta ran past him, and returned almost before he was seated, bringing the food. The girl sat down at the end of the table, opposite the street door, and watched him as he swallowed one mouthful of meat after another, now and then stopping to drink a tumbler of wine at a draught.

      "You must be very strong, Signore," said Annetta, at last, her chin resting on her doubled hand.

      "Why?" inquired Dalrymple, carelessly, between two mouthfuls.

      "Because you eat so much. It must be a fine thing to eat so much meat. We eat very little of it."

      "Why?" asked the Scotchman, again between his mouthfuls.

      "Oh, who knows? It costs much. That must be the reason. Besides, it does not go down. I should not care for it."

      "It is a habit." Dalrymple drank. "In my country most of the people eat oats," he said, as he set down his glass.

      "Oats!" laughed the girl. "Like horses! But horses will eat meat, too, like you. As for me—good bread, fresh cheese, a little salad, a drink of wine and water—that is enough."

      "Like the nuns," observed Dalrymple, attacking the ham of the 'Grape-eater.'

      "Oh, the nuns! They live on boiled cabbage! You can smell it a mile away. But they make good cakes."

      "You often go to the convent, do you not?" asked the Scotchman, filling his glass, for the first mouthful of ham made him thirsty again. "You take the linen up with your mother, I know."

      "Sometimes, when I feel like going," answered the girl, willing to show that it was not her duty to carry baskets. "I only go when we have the small baskets that one can carry on one's head. I will tell you. They use the small baskets for the finer things, the abbess's linen, and the altar cloths, and the chaplain's lace, which belongs to the nuns. But the sheets and the table linen are taken up in baskets as long as a man. It takes four women to carry one of them."

      "That must be very inconvenient," said Dalrymple. "I should think that smaller ones would always be better."

      "Who knows? It has always been so. And when it has always been so, it will always be so—one knows that."

      Annetta nodded her head rhythmically to convey an impression of the immutability of all ancient customs and of this one in particular.

      Dalrymple, however, was not much interested in the question of the baskets.

      "What do the nuns do all day?" he asked. "I suppose you see them, sometimes. There must be young ones amongst them."

      Annetta glanced more keenly at the Scotchman's quiet face, and then laughed.

      "There is one, if you could see her! The abbess's niece. Oh, that one is beautiful. She seems to me a painted angel!"

      "The abbess's niece? What is she like? Let me see, the abbess is a princess, is she not?"

      "Yes, a great princess of the Princes of Gerano, of Casa Braccio, you know. They are always abbesses. And the young one will be the next, when this one dies. She is Maria Addolorata, in religion, but I do not know her real name. She has a beautiful face and dark eyes. Once I saw her hair for a moment. It is fair, but not like yours. Yours is red as a tomato."

      "Thank you," said Dalrymple, with something like a laugh. "Tell me more about the nun."

      "If I tell you, you will fall in love with her," objected Annetta. "They say that men with red hair fall in love easily. Is it true? If it is, I will not tell you any more about the nun. But I think you are in love with the poor old Grape-eater. It is good ham, is it not? By Bacchus, I fed him on chestnuts with my own hands, and he was always stealing the grapes. Chestnuts fattened him and the grapes made him sweet. Speaking with respect, he was a pig for a pope."

      "He will do for a Scotch doctor then," answered Dalrymple. "Tell me, what does this beautiful nun do all day long?"

      "What does she do? What can a nun do? She eats cabbage and prays like the others. But she has charge of all the convent linen, so I see her when I go with my mother. That is because the Princes of Gerano first gave the linen to the convent after it was all stolen by the Turks in 1798. So, as they gave it, their abbesses take care of it."

      Dalrymple laughed at the extraordinary historical allusion compounded of the very ancient traditions of the Saracens in the south, and of the more recent wars of Napoleon.

      "So she takes care of the linen," he said. "That cannot be very amusing, I should think."

      "They are nuns," answered the girl. "Do you suppose they go about seeking to amuse themselves? It is an ugly life. But Sister Maria Addolorata sings to herself, and that makes the abbess angry, because it is against the rules to sing except in church. I would not live in that convent—not if they would fill my apron with gold pieces."

      "But why did this beautiful girl become a nun, then? Was she unhappy, or crossed in love?"

      "She? They did not give her time! Before she could shut an eye and say, 'Little youth, you please me, and I wish you well,' they put her in. And that door, when it is shut, who shall open it? The Madonna, perhaps? But she was of the Princes of Gerano, and there must be one of them for an abbess, and the lot fell upon her. There is the whole history. You may hear her singing sometimes, if you stand under the garden wall, on the narrow path after the Benediction hour and before Ave Maria. But I am a fool to tell you, for you will go and listen, and when you have heard her voice you will be like a madman. You will fall in love with her. I was a fool to tell you."

      "Well? And if I do fall in love with her, who cares?" Dalrymple slowly filled a glass of wine.

      "If you do?" The young girl's eyes shot a quick, sharp glance at him. Then her face suddenly grew grave as she saw that some one was at the street door, looking in cautiously. "Come in, Sor Tommaso!" she called, down the table. "Papa is out, but we are here. Come in and drink a glass of wine!"

      The doctor, wrapped in a long broadcloth cloak with a velvet collar, and having a case of instruments and medicines under his arm, glanced round the room and came in.

      "Just a half-foglietta, my daughter," he said. "They have sent for me. The abbess is very ill, and I may be there a long time. If you think they would remember to offer a Christian a glass up there, you are very much mistaken."

      "They are nuns," laughed Annetta. "What can they know?"

      She rose to get the wine for the doctor. There had not been a trace of displeasure in her voice nor in her manner as she spoke.

CHAPTER IV.

       Table of Contents

      Sor Tommaso was rarely called to the convent. In fact, he could not remember that he had been wanted more than half a dozen times in the long course of his practice in Subiaco. Either the nuns were hardly ever ill, or else they must have doctored themselves with such simple remedies as had been handed down to them from former ages. Possibly they had been as well off on the whole as though they had systematically submitted to the heroic treatment which passed for medicine in those days. As a matter of fact, they suffered chiefly from bad colds; and when they had bad colds, they either got well, or died, according to their several destinies. Sor Tommaso might have saved some of them; but on the other hand, he might have helped some others rather precipitately from their cells to that deep crypt, closed, in the middle of the little church, by a single square flag of marble, having two brass studs in it, and bearing the simple inscription: 'Here lie the bones of the Reverend Sisters of the order of the Blessed Virgin