“How should I hear?  Dressmakers can’t inquire at the doors of the nobility.”

“True.  Now one last question.  That little simpleton, Nanina?”

“I have never seen or heard anything of her.  She can’t be at Pisa, or she would have called at our place for work.”

“Ah!  I need not have asked about her if I had thought a moment beforehand.  Father Rocco would be sure to keep her out of Fabio’s sight, for his niece’s sake.”

“What, he really loved that ‘thread-paper of a girl’ as you called her?”

“Better than fifty such wives as he has got now!  I was in the studio the morning he was told of her departure from Pisa.  A letter was privately given to him, telling him that the girl had left the place out of a feeling of honor, and had hidden herself beyond the possibility of discovery, to prevent him from compromising himself with all his friends by marrying her.  Naturally enough, he would not believe that this was her own doing; and, naturally enough also, when Father Rocco was sent for, and was not to be found, he suspected the priest of being at the bottom of the business.  I never saw a man in such a fury of despair and rage before.  He swore that he would have all Italy searched for the girl, that he would be the death of the priest, and that he would never enter Luca Lomi’s studio again—­”

“And, as to this last particular, of course, being a man, he failed to keep his word?”

“Of course.  At that first visit of mine to the studio I discovered two things.  The first, as I said, that Fabio was really in love with the girl—­the second, that Maddalena Lomi was really in love with him.  You may suppose I looked at her attentively while the disturbance was going on, and while nobody’s notice was directed on me.  All women are vain, I know, but vanity never blinded my eyes.  I saw directly that I had but one superiority over her—­my figure.  She was my height, but not well made.  She had hair as dark and as glossy as mine; eyes as bright and as black as mine; and the rest of her face better than mine.  My nose is coarse, my lips are too thick, and my upper lip overhangs my under too far.  She had none of those personal faults; and, as for capacity, she managed the young fool in his passion as well as I could have managed him in her place.”

“How?”

“She stood silent, with downcast eyes and a distressed look, all the time he was raving up and down the studio.  She must have hated the girl, and been rejoiced at her disappearance; but she never showed it.  ‘You would be an awkward rival’ (I thought to myself), ‘even to a handsomer woman than I am.’  However, I determined not to despair too soon, and made up my mind to follow my plan just as if the accident of the girl’s disappearance had never occurred.  I smoothed down the master-sculptor easily enough—­flattering him about his reputation, assuring him that the works of Luca Lomi had been the objects of my adoration since