ess, but fair boys, who had
not told their twelfth year, culled from the daintiest palaces of Rome;
and, as for the music, oh, Lucia!--each musician should have worn a
chaplet, and deserved it; and he who played best should have had a
reward, to inspire all the rest--a rose from me. Saw you, too, the
Lady Giulia's robe? What colours! they might have put out the sun
at noonday!--yellow, and blue, and orange, and scarlet! Oh, sweet
Saints!--but my eyes ached all the next day!"

"Doubtless, the Lady Giulia lacks your skill in the mixture of colours,"
said the complaisant waiting-woman.

"And then, too, what a mien!--no royalty in it! She moved along the
hall, so that her train well nigh tripped her every moment; and then
she said, with a foolish laugh, 'These holyday robes are but troublesome
luxuries.' Troth, for the great there should be no holyday robes; 'tis
for myself, not for others, that I would attire! Every day should
have its new robe, more gorgeous than the last;--every day should be a
holyday!"

"Methought," said Lucia, "that the Lord Giovanni Orsini seemed very
devoted to my Lady."

"He! the bear!"

"Bear, he may be! but he has a costly skin. His riches are untold."

"And the fool knows not how to spend them."

"Was not that the young Lord Adrian who spoke to you just by the
columns, where the music played?"

"It might be,--I forget."

"Yet, I hear that few ladies forget when Lord Adrian di Castello woos
them."

"There was but one man whose company seemed to me worth the
recollection," answered Nina, unheeding the insinuation of the artful
handmaid.

"And who was he?" asked Lucia.

"The old scholar from Avignon!"

"What! he with the gray beard? Oh, Signora!"

"Yes," said Nina, with a grave and sad voice; "when he spoke, the whole
scene vanished from my eyes,--for he spoke to me of HIM!"

As she said this, the Signora sighed deeply, and the tears gathered to
her eyes.

The waiting-woman raised her lips in disdain, and her looks in wonder;
but she did not dare to venture a reply.

"Open the lattice," said Nina, after a pause, "and give me yon paper.
Not that, girl--but the verses sent me yesterday. What! art thou
Italian, and dost thou not know, by instinct, that I spoke of the rhyme
of Petrarch?"

Seated by the open casement, through which the moonlight stole soft
and sheen, with one lamp beside her, from which she seemed to shade her
eyes, though in reality she sought to hide her coun