began.

Conspicuous among them all was Giulietta, her blue-black hair recently
braided and polished to a glossy radiance, and all her costume arranged
to show her comely proportions to the best advantage,--her great pearl
ear-rings shaking as she tossed her head, and showing the flash of
the emerald in the middle of them. An Italian peasant-woman may trust
Providence for her gown, but ear-rings she attends to herself,--for what
is life without them? The great pearl ear-rings of the Sorrento women
are accumulated, pearl by pearl, as the price of years of labor.
Giulietta, however, had come into the world, so to speak, with a gold
spoon in her mouth,--since her grandmother, a thriving, stirring,
energetic body, had got together a pair of ear-rings of unmatched size,
which had descended as heirlooms to her, leaving her nothing to do but
display them, which she did with the freest good-will. At present she
was busily occupied in coquetting with a tall and jauntily-dressed
fellow, wearing a plumed hat and a red sash, who seemed to be mesmerized
by the power of her charms, his large dark eyes following every
movement, as she now talked with him gayly and freely, and now pretended
errands to this and that and the other person on the bridge, stationing
herself here and there, that she might have the pleasure of seeing
herself followed.

"Giulietta," at last said the young man, earnestly, when he found her
accidentally standing alone by the parapet, "I must be going to-morrow."

"Well, what is that to me?" said Giulietta, looking wickedly from under
her eyelashes.

"Cruel girl! you know"----

"Nonsense, Pietro! I don't know anything about you"; but as Giulietta
said this, her great, soft, dark eyes looked out furtively, and said
just the contrary.

"You will go with me?"

"Did I ever hear anything like it? One can't be civil to a fellow but he
asks her to go to the world's end. Pray, how far is it to your dreadful
old den?"

"Only two days' journey, Giulietta."

"Two days!"

"Yes, my life; and you shall ride."

"Thank you, Sir,--I wasn't thinking of walking. But seriously, Pietro, I
am afraid it's no place for an honest girl to be in."

"There are lots of honest women there,--all our men have wives; and our
captain has put his eye on one, too, or I'm mistaken."

"What! little Agnes?" said Giulietta. "He will be bright that gets her.
That old dragon of a grandmother is as tight to her as her skin."

"Our captai