s was seated by the door of her house; overhead a rude
canvas awning sheltered her from the sun; on her lap lay the manuscript
of a new part in which she was shortly to appear. By her side was the
guitar on which she had been practising the airs that were to ravish
the ears of the cognoscenti. But the guitar had been thrown aside in
despair; her voice this morning did not obey her will. The manuscript
lay unheeded, and the eyes of the actress were fixed on the broad, blue
deep beyond. In the unwonted negligence of her dress might be traced the
abstraction of her mind. Her beautiful hair was gathered up loosely, and
partially bandaged by a kerchief, whose purple color seemed to deepen
the golden hue of the tresses. A stray curl escaped, and fell down the
graceful neck. A loose morning robe, girded by a sash, left the
breeze that came ever and anon from the sea to die upon the bust half
disclosed, and the tiny slipper, that Cinderella might have worn, seemed
a world too wide for the tiny foot which it scarcely covered. It might
be the heat of the day that deepened the soft bloom of the cheeks and
gave an unwonted languor to the large dark eyes. In all the pomp of her
stage attire, in all the flush of excitement before the intoxicating
lamps, never had Isabel looked so lovely.
By the side of the actress, and filling up the threshold, stood
Gionetta, with her hands thrust up to the elbow in two huge recesses
on either side her gown,--pockets, indeed, they might be called by
courtesy; such pockets as Beelzebub's grandmother might have shaped for
herself, bottomless pits in miniature.
"But I assure you," said the nurse, in that sharp, quick, earsplitting
tone in which the old women of the South are more than a match for those
of the North,--"but I assure you, my darling, that there is not a finer
cavalier in all Naples, nor a more beautiful, than this Inglese; and I
am told that all the Inglesi are much richer than they seem. Though they
have no trees in their country, poor people, and instead of twenty-four
they have only twelve hours to the day, yet I hear, cospetto! that they
shoe their horses with steak; and since they cannot (the poor heretics!)
turn grapes into wine, for they have no grapes, they turn gold into
physic, and take a glass or two of pistoles whenever they are troubled
with the colic. But you don't hear me! Little pupil of my eyes, you
don't hear me!"
"Gionetta, is he not god-like?"
"Sancta Maria! he
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