“Oh, Herr Ritter!”

“Don’t cry ‘oh, Herr Ritter!’ in that reproachful manner, for this fruit really cost me nothing.  It was given to me.  Little Andrea Bruno brought it to me today.”

“The fruit-seller’s child?  Yes, yes, I daresay; but it was not meant for me!  It’s no use trying to hide your good deeds, Herr Ritter!  ’Tista has told me how kind you were to Andrea’s little sister when she sprained her foot last month; and how you bandaged it for her, and used to go and read to her all the morning, when her father and Andrea were out selling fruit, and she would have been left alone but for you; and I know, too, all about poor crippled Antonia and Catterina Pic—.  Don’t go away, I won’t say any more about it!  But I couldn’t help telling you I knew; you dear, good Herr Ritter!”

He had half-risen, but now he reseated himself, and drew his chair nearer her couch.  In doing this his eyes met hers, and he looked earnestly into them a moment.

“Lora, you have been weeping.  What is the matter?”

She moved restlessly on her hard pillows, and dropped her gaze from his face, and I noted that a faint blush stole over her sunken cheeks and touched her forehead.  With that tender glow, under the faded skin, she looked almost beautiful.  She was young, certainly, not more than thirty at the utmost; but she was very poor and desolate, and there is nothing so quick at sapping the blood and withering the beauty of women as poverty and desolation.  Nothing.

“Herr Ritter,” she said, after a little pause, “I will tell you what is the matter.  Perhaps you may be able to advise me; I don’t quite know what to do.  You know how very, very much my ’Tista wants to be a chemist, so I needn’t say anything about that.  Well, he must be brought up to something, you know; he must learn to be something when the time comes for him to live without me, and I don’t think, Herr Ritter, it will be very long—­ before—­before that time comes, now.”

I noted again that the old man did not contradict her.  He only watched her drooping face, and listened.

“I have worked early and late,” she went on in low, swift tones, “to try and lay by a little money towards getting him apprenticed to some chemist in the town.  He has worked, too, poor child.  But it is little—­nothing—­we could save between us; for we must live meanwhile, you know, dear friend, and there is the rent to pay.  Well, now I am coming to my story.  When I was a young girl, I had a sister, ten years older than I. We were orphans, and an old aunt took care of us.  I married—­against my aunt’s wish, in the face of my sister’s warnings,—­a poor improvisatore.  We were poor enough, of course, before that, my sister and I, but we were not beggars, and the husband I took was below me.  Well, my sister was very angry, dreadfully angry, but I was young and strong, and I was in love, so