Her name was Settimia, and it was wonderful to see how she quietly transformed Regina into a civilised creature, who must attract attention by her beauty and carriage, but who might have belonged to a middle-class Roman family so far as manners and dress were concerned.  It is true that the girl possessed by nature the innate dignity of the Roman peasant, with such a figure and such grace as any aristocrat might have envied, and that she spoke with the Roman accent which almost all other Italians admire; but though her manners had a certain repose, they were often of an extremely unexpected nature, and she had an astonishingly simple way of calling things by their names which sometimes disconcerted Marcello and sometimes amused him.  Settimia civilised her, almost without letting her know it, for she was quick to learn, like all naturally clever people who have had no education, and she was imitative, as all womanly women are when they are obliged to adapt themselves quickly to new surroundings.  She was stimulated, too, by the wish to appear well before Marcello, lest he should ever be ashamed of her.  That was all.  She never had the least illusion about herself, nor any hope of raising herself to his social level.  She was far too much the real peasant girl for that, the descendant of thirty or more generations of serfs, the offspring of men and women who had felt that they belonged body and soul to the feudal lord of the land on which they were born, and had never been disturbed by tempting dreams of liberty, equality, fraternity, and the violent destruction of ladies and gentlemen.

So she lived, and so she learned many things of Settimia, and looked upon herself as the absolute property of the man she loved and had saved; and she was perfectly happy, if not perfectly good.

“When I am of age,” Marcello used to say, “I shall buy a beautiful little palace near the Tiber, and you shall live in it.”

“Why?” she always asked.  “Are we not happy here?  Is it not cool in summer, and sunny in winter?  Have we not all we want?  When you marry, your wife will live in the splendid villa on the Janiculum, and when you are tired of her, you will come and see Regina here.  I hope you will always be tired of her.  Then I shall be happy.”

Marcello would laugh a little, and then he would look grave and thoughtful, for he had not forgotten Aurora, and sometimes wondered what she was doing, as a young man does who is losing his hold upon himself, and on the things in which he has always believed.  He who has never lived through such times and outlived them, knows neither the world nor himself.