“I don’t want one, Giulietta.  I hope I never shall see him again.”

“Oh, nonsense, Agnes!  Why, what a girl you are!  Why, before I was as old as you I had half-a-dozen lovers.”

“Agnes,” said the sharp voice of Elsie, coming up from behind, “don’t run on ahead of me again;—­and you, Mistress Baggage, let my child alone.”

“Who’s touching your child?” said Giulietta, scornfully.  “Can’t a body say a civil word to her?”

“I know what you would be after,” said Elsie,—­“filling her head with talk of all the wild, loose gallants; but she is for no such market, I promise you!  Come, Agnes.”

So saying, old Elsie drew Agnes rapidly along with her, leaving Giulietta rolling her great black eyes after them with an air of infinite contempt.

“The old kite!” she said; “I declare he shall get speech of the little dove, if only to spite her.  Let her try her best, and see if we don’t get round her before she knows it.  Pietro says his master is certainly wild after her, and I have promised to help him.”

Meanwhile, just as old Elsie and Agnes were turning into the orange-orchard which led into the Gorge of Sorrento, they met the cavalier of the evening before.

He stopped, and, removing his cap, saluted them with as much deference as if they had been princesses.  Old Elsie frowned, and Agnes blushed deeply;—­both hurried forward.  Looking back, the old woman saw that he was walking slowly behind them, evidently watching them closely, yet not in a way sufficiently obtrusive to warrant an open rebuff.

CHAPTER VIII.

The cavalier.

Nothing can be more striking, in common Italian life, than the contrast between out-doors and in-doors.  Without, all is fragrant and radiant; within, mouldy, dark, and damp.  Except in the well-kept palaces of the great, houses in Italy are more like dens than habitations, and a sight of them is a sufficient reason to the mind of any inquirer, why their vivacious and handsome inhabitants spend their life principally in the open air.  Nothing could be more perfectly paradisiacal than this evening at Sorrento.  The sun had sunk, but left the air full of diffused radiance, which trembled and vibrated over the thousand many-colored waves of the sea.  The moon was riding in a broad zone of purple, low in the horizon, her silver forehead somewhat flushed in the general rosiness that seemed to penetrate and suffuse every object.  The fishermen, who were drawing in their nets, gayly singing, seemed to be floating on a violet-and-gold-colored flooring that broke into a thousand gems at every dash of the oar or motion of the boat.  The old stone statue of Saint Antonio looked down in the rosy air, itself tinged and brightened by the magical colors which floated round it.  And the girls and men of Sorrento gathered in gossiping knots on the old Roman bridge that spanned the gorge, looked idly down into its dusky shadows, talking the while, and playing the time-honored game of flirtation which has gone on in all climes and languages since man and woman began.