," Matteo grumbled when she came back.

Silvia uttered an exclamation of dismay, ran for a silvery-white little
onion and sliced it thinly into the salad.

"Forgive me, Matteo," she said. "I was distracted by the thought of
Claudio. It seems such a terrible thing."

"It would be a much more terrible thing if it were a girl who
disobeyed," Matteo growled. He did not like that girls should criticise
men.

"So it would," the girl responded with meek readiness.

"I don't know why I feel so tired to-day," the mother said, sinking into
a chair again. "My bones ache as if I had been working in the vineyard
all day."

"You are not ill, mamma?" exclaimed Silvia, blushing with alarm.

The answer was a hesitating one: "I don't see what can ail me. It
wouldn't be anything, only that I am so tired without having done much."

"Perhaps it's the weather, mamma," Silvia suggested.

Gentle as she was, she had adopted the ruthless and ungrateful Italian
custom of ascribing every ache and pain of the body to some almost
imperceptible change in their too beautiful weather. The smallest cloud
goes laden with more accusations than it holds drops of rain, and the
ill winds that blow nobody any good blow through those shining skies
from morning till night and from night till morning again.

The Sora Guai was sicker than she dreamed. It was not the summer sun
that scorched her so, nor the _scirocco_ that made her head so heavy.
What malaria she had found to breathe on the mountain-top it would be
hard to say; but the dreaded _perniciosa_ had caught her in its grasp,
and she was doomed. The fever burned fiercely for a few days, and when
it was quenched there was nothing left but ashes.

And thus died the only earthly thing to which Sister Silvia's heart
clung. The mother had been stern, but the daughter was too submissive to
need correction. She had never had any will of her own, except to love
and obey. Collision between them was therefore impossible, and the
daughter felt as a frail plant growing under a shadowing tree might feel
if the tree were cut down. She was bare to every wind that blew. She had
no companions of her own age--she had no companion of any age, in
fact--and she had not been accustomed to think for herself in the
smallest thing.

She had got bent into a certain shape, however, and her brother and
sister felt quite safe on her account. Everybody knew that she was to be
a nun of the Perpetual Adoration; that she wa