The guileless little damsel looked up with an expression of surprise, and said:  “How could I bear to have him make love to me, when he was Rosa’s husband?  He is so handsome and fascinating, that, if he had loved me instead of Rosa, in the beginning, I dare say I should have been as much in love with him as she was.  I did dearly love him while he was a kind brother; but I couldn’t love him so.  It would have killed Rosa if I had.  Besides, he told falsehoods; and papa taught us to consider that as the meanest of faults.  I have heard him tell Rosa he never loved anybody but her, when an hour before he had told me he loved me better than Rosa.  What could I do but despise such a man?  Then, when he threatened to sell me, I became dreadfully afraid of him.”  She started up, as if struck by a sudden thought, and exclaimed wildly, “What if he has sold Rosa?”

Her friend brought forward every argument and every promise she could think of to pacify her; and when she had become quite calm, they sang a few hymns together, and before retiring to rest knelt down side by side and prayed for strength and guidance in these new troubles.

Flora remained a long time wakeful, thinking of Rosa deserted and alone.  She had formed many projects concerning what was to be seen and heard and done in Rome; but she forgot them all.  She did not even think of the much-anticipated opera, until she heard from the street snatches of Norma, whistled or sung by the dispersing audience.  A tenor voice passed the house singing, Vieni in Roma.  “Ah,” thought she, “Gerald and I used to sing that duet together.  And in those latter days how languishingly he used to look at me, behind her back, while he sang passionately, ‘Ah, deh cedi, cedi a me!’ And poor cheated Rosa would say, ’Dear Gerald, how much heart you put into your voice!’ O shame, shame!  What could I do but run away?  Poor Rosa!  How I wish I could hear her sing ‘Casta Diva,’ as she used to do when we sat gazing at the moon shedding its soft light over the pines in that beautiful lonely island.”

And so, tossed for a long while on a sea of memories, she finally drifted into dream-land.

CHAPTER XIX.

While Flora was listlessly gazing at Monte Pincio from the solitude of her room in the Via delle Quattro Fontane, Rosabella was looking at the same object, seen at a greater distance, over intervening houses, from her high lodgings in the Corso.  She could see the road winding like a ribbon round the hill, with a medley of bright colors continually moving over it.  But she was absorbed in revery, and they floated round and round before her mental eye, like the revolving shadows of a magic lantern.