“Nothing,” said Nanina, constrainedly.  She turned pale, and walked away as she spoke.  Her great dread, in returning to Pisa, was the dread of meeting with Father Rocco again.  She had never forgotten her first discovery at Florence of his distrust of her.  The bare thought of seeing him any more, after her faith in him had been shaken forever, made her feel faint and sick at heart.

“To-morrow, in the housekeeper’s room,” said the steward, putting on his hat, “you will find your new dress all ready for you.”

Nanina courtesied, and ventured on no more objections.  The prospect of securing a home for a whole year to come among people whom she knew, reconciled her—­influenced as she was also by Marta Angrisani’s advice, and by her sister’s anxiety for the promised present—­to brave the trial of appearing at the ball.

“What a comfort to have it all settled at last,” said the steward, as soon as he was out again in the street.  “We shall see what the marquis says now.  If he doesn’t apologize for calling me a scoundrel the moment he sets eyes on Number Thirty, he is the most ungrateful nobleman that ever existed.”

Arriving in front of the palace, the steward found workmen engaged in planning the external decorations and illuminations for the night of the ball.  A little crowd had already assembled to see the ladders raised and the scaffoldings put up.  He observed among them, standing near the outskirts of the throng, a lady who attracted his attention (he was an ardent admirer of the fair sex) by the beauty and symmetry of her figure.  While he lingered for a moment to look at her, a shaggy poodle-dog (licking his chops, as if he had just had something to eat) trotted by, stopped suddenly close to the lady, sniffed suspiciously for an instant, and then began to growl at her without the slightest apparent provocation.  The steward advancing politely with his stick to drive the dog away, saw the lady start, and heard her exclaim to herself amazedly: 

“You here, you beast!  Can Nanina have come back to Pisa?”

This last exclamation gave the steward, as a gallant man, an excuse for speaking to the elegant stranger.

“Excuse me, madam,” he said, “but I heard you mention the name of Nanina.  May I ask whether you mean a pretty little work-girl who lives near the Campo Santo?”

“The same,” said the lady, looking very much surprised and interested immediately.

“It may be a gratification to you, madam, to know that she has just returned to Pisa,” continued the steward, politely; “and, moreover, that she is in a fair way to rise in the world.  I have just engaged her to wait at the marquis’s grand ball, and I need hardly say, under those circumstances, that if she plays her cards properly her fortune is made.”

The lady bowed, looked at her informant very intently and thoughtfully for a moment, then suddenly walked away without uttering a word.