He did not wait for her answer.  “It was in Naples—­at Pompeii.  I saw at the first glance that he was different from other Americans, and I resolved to know him.  He was there in company with a stupid boy, whose tutor he was; and he told me that he was studying to be a minister of the Protestant church.  Next year he will go home to be consecrated.  He promised to pass through Florence in the spring, and he will keep his word.  Every act, every word, every thought of his is regulated by conscience.  It is terrible, but it is beautiful.”  All the time, the Russian was fanning Clementina, with every outward appearance of flirtation.  “Will you dance again?  No?  I should like to draw such a character as his in a romance.”

XXII.

It was six o’clock in the morning before Miss Milray sent Clementina home in her carriage.  She would have kept her to breakfast, but Clementina said she ought to go on Mrs. Lander’s account, and she wished to go on her own.

She thought she would steal to bed without waking her, but she was stopped by the sound of groans when she entered their apartment; the light gushed from Mrs. Lander’s door.  Maddalena came out, and blessed the name of her Latin deity (so much more familiar and approachable than the Anglo-Saxon divinity) that Clementina had come at last, and poured upon her the story of a night of suffering for Mrs. Lander.  Through her story came the sound of Mrs. Lander’s voice plaintively reproachful, summoning Clementina to her bedside.  “Oh, how could you go away and leave me?  I’ve been in such misery the whole night long, and the docta didn’t do a thing for me.  I’m puffectly wohn out, and I couldn’t make my wants known with that Italian crazy-head.  If it hadn’t been for the portyary comin’ in and interpretin’, when the docta left, I don’t know what I should have done.  I want you should give him a twenty-leary note just as quick as you see him; and oh, isn’t the docta comin’?”

Clementina set about helping Maddalena put the room, which was in an impassioned disorder, to rights; and she made Mrs. Lander a cup of her own tea, which she had brought from S. S. Pierces in passing through Boston; it was the first thing, the sufferer said, that had saved her life.  Clementina comforted her, and promised her that the doctor should be there very soon; and before Mrs. Lander fell away to sleep, she was so far out of danger as to be able to ask how Clementina had enjoyed herself, and to be glad that she had such a good time.

The doctor would not wake her when he came; he said that she had been through a pretty sharp gastric attack, which would not recur, if she ate less of the most unwholesome things she could get, and went more into the air, and walked a little.  He did not seem alarmed, and he made Clementina tell him about the dance, which he had been called from to Mrs. Lander’s bed of pain.  He joked her for not having missed him; in the midst of their fun, she caught herself in the act of yawning, and the doctor laughed, and went away.