roguish smile into her face, “you do care for Beppo, don’t you?”
“But what does it signify, Signorina Lisa, whether I care for him or not?” said poor Giulia, thus forced against her will into a half-confidence; “You know, even if I did, and he loved me ever so well, there could never be anything between us.”
“What! because of the old ones? Bah!—whish—sh—sh!” said Lisa, prolonging her hissing expletive, and vibrating the fingers of one extended hand, in a manner expressing to Italian perceptions the most intense derision and contempt. “Lord bless you!—now-a-days they can’t shut us up in prisons—no—nor make nuns of us either,” continued the well-instructed city-maiden; “you have nothing to do but to stick to it.”
Giulia felt an irresistible repugnance to attempting to make Lisa understand what were the feelings that really did place, to her mind, an insuperable bar between her and Beppo. It would have been better for her peace of mind, perhaps, if she had done so; for the light worldly wisdom and town-bred ridicule with which Lisa would have treated her scruples, might have to a certain degree been a useful corrective of Giulia’s high-minded but exaggerated pride. She felt it impossible for her, however, to do so. She turned the conversation, therefore, by reverting to the very natural subject of the life which awaited her with Signora Dossi.
“She does not keep any other servant, does she?” asked Giulia.
“No, only one; but you won’t find that you have any very hard work to do. I should think you would find it best not to have any one else in the house to interfere with you.”
“But, you say, she has people at her house?”
“Oh, yes, very often!—not regular parties, you know. But there are always people running in and out. La Dossi likes it. I think the poor old soul would annoiare herself to death if she had not people about the house. She can’t go about herself much, you know.”
“Why not?” asked Giulia.
“Why not! Wait till you see, and then you will know why not. Lord bless you! it’s as much as she can do to walk to the church next door every day.”
“Is she very religious?” asked Giulia.
“Yes, very—in a quiet way. But she don’t bother other people with it. She thinks it will come to your turn soon enough.”
“But with so many people about the house, and one servant to do everything, how shall I ever be able to get through?”
“Oh! you will do very well. She is not-like a gran’ Signorina dell’ alto celo,[1] la Dossi. She does half the work herself. She lives half in the kitchen; and you’ll live half in the drawing-room. She would not have any common servant girl, look you! So that was how babbo came to think of you, you see.”
To a certain extent, then, what the lawyer had said about the exceptional nature of the position he was proposing to “a Vanni” was founded in truth.
And then Signor Sandro himself came in from seeing his guest off on his return to Bella Luce; and announced that he was ready to accompany la Signorina Giulia to the house of his friend la Signora Dossi, and that it was time to be going.
So Giulia and the attorney set off together, Lisa having promised to see her again before long in her new home, and proceeded to the house of la Dossi, while Signor Sandro administered a lecture on the manner in which she was to behave towards her mistress, and on her own good fortune in being received into such a house.
It cannot be expected that our poor mountain nymph, fresh from the Apennine, should enter her now abode without much misgiving. Giulia felt not a little at the unexpected magnificence of the palace at which Signor Sandro stopped.
“Does la Signora Dossi live here?” she asked, with considerable awe.
“Yes; here we are! This is the Palazzo Bollandini. The Marchese lives at Rome. La Dossi lives on the first floor. There are very few other tenants in the house.”
So saying, he led the way up the enormous staircase; and Giulia was more astonished than ever at the magnificence of her mistress’s lodging. It was a huge wide staircase, built of yellow Travertini stone, with the steps so easy and shallow that it would have been no difficult feat to ride up it on horseback. The immense panelled walnut-wood folding doors, with chased gilt bronze handles in the middle of each of them, were on a scale of magnificence to match, and Giulia opened her simple eyes wider and wider as those splendours revealed themselves to her.
A small bit of greasy twine passed through a gimlet-hole in one of these grand doors, by way of a bell-pull, however, struck the first note of the descending scale, which connected the ancestral magnificence of the Bollandini of former generations with the habits and style of modern life at Fano. Signor Sandro and his companion had to wait a long time before the application of the former to the bit of twine—performed, as Italians invariably do, with a whole succession of pulls, as if he were intent on ringing a peal—produced any result.
Signor Sandro was neither surprised nor impatient. He knew that there was probably no one inside, save la Clementina herself,—that she travelled slowly, and that she had a long way to travel.
At last, however, the door was opened; and wide as its aperture was, it disclosed a portion only of the still ampler person of the lady of the mansion. There stood la Signora Dossi, the ex-sylph, firmly planted on both feet, so as to assign to each of them its fair share of the work of supporting her person, in the attitude generally adopted by persons of her inches—of circumference. There she stood, rather out of breath, but beaming with good-nature and good-humour.
“Signora Clementina,” said the little attorney, bowing still outside the door, for it did not seem to occur to the ex-sylph that the door-way was still as effectually closed by her own person, as if she had not opened it, “here is the young person of whom I spoke to you. She came from Bella- ↑ A grandee—great lady of the highest class.
