if my words should distress you?"
(Nanina turned away her head.) "Now, tell me; should I be wrong, to
begin with, if I said that my brother's pupil, the young nobleman
whom we call 'Signor Fabio,' had been here to see you to-day?" (Nanina
started up affrightedly from her stool.) "Sit down again, my child; I am
not going to blame you. I am only going to tell you what you must do for
the future."

He took her hand; it was cold, and it trembled violently in his.

"I will not ask what he has been saying to you," continued the priest;
"for it might distress you to answer, and I have, moreover, had means of
knowing that your youth and beauty have made a strong impression on
him. I will pass over, then, all reference to the words he may have been
speaking to you; and I will come at once to what I have now to say,
in my turn. Nanina, my child, arm yourself with all your courage, and
promise me, before we part to-night, that you will see Signor Fabio no
more."

Nanina turned round suddenly, and fixed her eyes on him, with an
expression of terrified incredulity. "No more?"

"You are very young and very innocent," said Father Rocco; "but surely
you must have thought before now of the difference between Signor Fabio
and you. Surely you must have often remembered that you are low down
among the ranks of the poor, and that he is high up among the rich and
the nobly born?"

Nanina's hands dropped on the priest's knees. She bent her head down on
them, and began to weep bitterly.

"Surely you must have thought of that?" reiterated Father Rocco.

"Oh, I have often, often thought of it!" murmured the girl "I have
mourned over it, and cried about it in secret for many nights past. He
said I looked pale, and ill, and out of spirits to-day, and I told him
it was with thinking of that!"

"And what did he say in return?"

There was no answer. Father Rocco looked down. Nanina raised her head
directly from his knees, and tried to turn it away again. He took her
hand and stopped her.

"Come!" he said; "speak frankly to me. Say what you ought to say to your
father and your friend. What was his answer, my child, when you reminded
him of the difference between you?"

"He said I was born to be a lady," faltered the girl, still struggling
to turn her face away, "and that I might make myself one if I would
learn and be patient. He said that if he had all the noble ladies in
Pisa to choose from on one side, and only little Nanina on the ot