t-the-walls, N.E. of Rome.

Unfavourable reports were circulated about the ladies, the mother having
almost lost caste since she had become a widow, and the girl having too
bold a beauty, too conquering an air. Thus the marriage had not met with
the approval of Serafina, who was very rigid, or of Onofrio's elder
brother Pio, at that time merely a _Cameriere segreto_ of the Holy Father
and a Canon of the Vatican basilica. Only Ernesta kept up a regular
intercourse with Onofrio, fond of him as she was by reason of his gaiety
of disposition; and thus, later on, her favourite diversion was to go
each week to the Villa Montefiori with her daughter Benedetta, there to
spend the day. And what a delightful day it always proved to Benedetta
and Dario, she ten years old and he fifteen, what a fraternal loving day
in that vast and almost abandoned garden with its parasol pines, its
giant box-plants, and its clumps of evergreen oaks, amidst which one lost
oneself as in a virgin forest.

The poor stifled soul of Ernesta was a soul of pain and passion. Born
with a mighty longing for life, she thirsted for the sun--for a free,
happy, active existence in the full daylight. She was noted for her large
limpid eyes and the charming oval of her gentle face. Extremely ignorant,
like all the daughters of the Roman nobility, having learnt the little
she knew in a convent of French nuns, she had grown up cloistered in the
black Boccanera palace, having no knowledge of the world than by those
daily drives to the Corso and the Pincio on which she accompanied her
mother. Eventually, when she was five and twenty, and was already weary
and desolate, she contracted the customary marriage of her caste,
espousing Count Brandini, the last-born of a very noble, very numerous
and poor family, who had to come and live in the Via Giulia mansion,
where an entire wing of the second floor was got ready for the young
couple. And nothing changed, Ernesta continued to live in the same cold
gloom, in the midst of the same dead past, the weight of which, like that
of a tombstone, she felt pressing more and more heavily upon her.

The marriage was, on either side, a very honourable one. Count Brandini
soon passed as being the most foolish and haughty man in Rome. A strict,
intolerant formalist in religious matters, he became quite triumphant
when, after innumerable intrigues, secret plottings which lasted ten long
years, he at last secured the appointment of grand