“You are a very charming little lady!” I said, playfully.  “And so your name is Stella?  That is because you are a little star, I suppose?”

She became meditative.  “Papa said I was,” she answered, softly and shyly.

“Papa spoiled you!” interposed Nina, pressing a filmy black-bordered handkerchief to her eyes.  “Poor papa!  You were not so naughty to him as you are to me.”

The child’s lip quivered, but she was silent.

“Oh, fy!” I murmured, half chidingly.  “Are you ever naughty?  Surely not!  All little stars are good—­they never cry—­they are always bright and calm.”

Still she remained mute—­a sigh, deep enough for an older sufferer, heaved her tiny breast.  She leaned her head against my arm and raised her eyes appealingly.

“Have you seen my papa?” she asked, timidly.  “Will he come back soon?”

For a moment I did not answer her.  Ferrari took it upon himself to reply roughly.  “Don’t talk nonsense, baby!  You know your papa has gone away—­you were too naughty for him, and he will never come back again.  He has gone to a place where there are no tiresome little girls to tease him.”

Thoughtless and cruel words!  I at once understood the secret grief that weighed on the child’s mind.  Whenever she was fretful or petulant, they evidently impressed it upon her that her father had left her because of her naughtiness.  She had taken this deeply to heart; no doubt she had brooded upon it in her own vague childish fashion, and had puzzled her little brain as to what she could possibly have done to displease her father so greatly that he had actually gone away never to return.  Whatever her thoughts were, she did not on this occasion give vent to them by tears or words.  She only turned her eyes on Ferrari with a look of intense pride and scorn, strange to see in so little a creature—­a true Romani look, such as I had often noticed in my father’s eyes, and such as I knew must be frequently visible in my own.  Ferrari saw it, and burst out laughing loudly.

“There!” he exclaimed.  “Like that she exactly resembles her father!  It is positively ludicrous!  Fabio, all over!  She only wants one thing to make the portrait perfect.”  And approaching her, he snatched one of her long curls and endeavored to twist it over her mouth in the form of a mustache.  The child struggled angrily, and hid her face against my coat.  The more she tried to defend herself the greater the malice with which Ferrari tormented her.  Her mother did not interfere—­she only laughed.  I held the little thing closely sheltered in my embrace, and steadying down the quiver of indignation in my voice, I said with quiet firmness: 

“Fair play, signor!  Fair play!  Strength becomes mere bullying when it is employed against absolute weakness.”

Ferrari laughed again, but this time uneasily, and ceasing his monkeyish pranks, walked to the window.  Smoothing Stella’s tumbled hair, I added with a sarcastic smile: