t was promised that Silvia should stay a
month with you," Matteo replied. "There is work at home for her to do.
Since she is not to be a nun, she must work. Let her be ready to start
in an hour: my carriage is waiting at the door. I am going out into the
piazza for a little while. I will send a man up for her trunk when I am
ready to start."

Silvia uttered not a word. At sight of her brother she had sunk back in
her chair white and speechless. On hearing his voice she had closed her
eyes.

He half turned to her before going out, looking at her out of the
corners of his evil eyes, a cold, strange smile wreathing his lips. "So
you are not going to be a nun?" he said.

She did not respond. Only the quiver of her lowered eyelids and a slight
shiver told that she knew he was addressing her.

Matteo went out, and the signora, at her wits' end, undertook to
encourage Silvia. There was no time to see Monsignor Catinari or to
appeal to any authority; and if there were, it would have availed
nothing perhaps. Almost any one would have said that the girl's terrors
were fanciful, and that it was quite natural her brother, who would lose
five hundred scudi by her change of purpose, should require her to work
as other girls of her condition worked.

"Cheer up and go with him, _figlia mia_," she said, "and leave all to
me. I will see Monsignor Catinari this very evening, and post a letter
to you before I go to bed. If Matteo is unkind to you, we will have you
taken away from him at once. And, in any case, you shall be married in a
few weeks at the most, as Monsignor promised. Don't cry so: don't say
that you cannot go. I am sorry and vexed, my dear, but I see no way but
for you to go. Depend upon me. No harm shall come to you. I will myself
come to Monte Compatri within the week, and arrange all for you.
Besides, recollect that you will see Claudio: he is there waiting for
you. Perhaps you may see him this very evening."

The Signora Fantini's efforts to cheer and reassure the sister were as
ineffectual as her efforts to persuade the brother had been. Silvia
submitted because she had no strength to resist.

"O Madonna mia!" she kept murmuring, "he will kill me! he will kill me!
O Madonna mia! pray for me."

When an Italian says that he will come back in an hour, you may look for
him after two hours. Matteo was no exception to the rule. It was already
mid-afternoon when the porter came up and said that Silvia's brother was
wa