“How came you to leave this situation?”

“The lady and her family were going to Rome, sir.  They would have taken me with them, but they could not take my sister.  We are alone in the world, and we never have been parted from each other, and never shall be—­so I was obliged to leave the situation.”

“And here you are, back at Pisa—­with nothing to do, I suppose?”

“Nothing yet, sir.  We only came back yesterday.”

“Only yesterday!  You are a lucky girl, let me tell you, to have met with me.  I suppose you have somebody in the town who can speak to your character?”

“The landlady of this house can, sir.”

“And who is she, pray?”

“Marta Angrisani, sir.”

“What! the well-known sick-nurse?  You could not possibly have a better recommendation, child.  I remember her being employed at the Melani Palace at the time of the marquis’s last attack of gout; but I never knew that she kept a lodging-house.”

“She and her daughter, sir, have owned this house longer than I can recollect.  My sister and I have lived in it since I was quite a little child, and I had hoped we might be able to live here again.  But the top room we used to have is taken, and the room to let lower down is far more, I am afraid, than we can afford.”

“How much is it?”

Nanina mentioned the weekly rent of the room in fear and trembling.  The steward burst out laughing.

“Suppose I offered you money enough to be able to take that room for a whole year at once?” he said.

Nanina looked at him in speechless amazement.  “Suppose I offered you that?” continued the steward.  “And suppose I only ask you in return to put on a fine dress and serve refreshments in a beautiful room to the company at the Marquis Melani’s grand ball?  What should you say to that?”

Nanina said nothing.  She drew back a step or two, and looked more bewildered than before.

“You must have heard of the ball,” said the steward, pompously; “the poorest people in Pisa have heard of it.  It is the talk of the whole city.”

Still Nanina made no answer.  To have replied truthfully, she must have confessed that “the talk of the whole city” had now no interest for her.  The last news from Pisa that had appealed to her sympathies was the news of the Countess d’Ascoli’s death, and of Fabio’s departure to travel in foreign countries.  Since then she had heard nothing more of him.  She was as ignorant of his return to his native city as of all the reports connected with the marquis’s ball.  Something in her own heart—­some feeling which she had neither the desire nor the capacity to analyze—­had brought her back to Pisa and to the old home which now connected itself with her tenderest recollections.  Believing that Fabio was still absent, she felt that no ill motive could now be attributed to her return; and she had not been able to resist the temptation of revisiting the scene that had been associated with the first great happiness as well as with the first great sorrow of her life.  Among all the poor people of Pisa, she was perhaps the very last whose curiosity could be awakened, or whose attention could be attracted by the rumor of gayeties at the Melani Palace.