And there she sat with the last light from the tall windows and the first from the great wax candles shining on her, while all around seemed dark by contrast.  She looked like an angel; and quite as cold, perhaps most of you would say.  Diamonds are cold things, too, but they shine in the dark; whereas a bit of glass just lets the light through it, even if it is coloured red and green and put in a church window, and looks ever so much warmer than the diamond.

But though I saw her beauty and the light of her face, all in a moment, as though it had been a dream, I saw.  Nino, too; for I had missed him, and had supposed he had gone to the organ loft with De Pretis.  But now, as the people kneeled to the benediction, imagine a little what he did; he just dropped on his knees with his face to the white lady, and his back to the procession; it was really disgraceful, and if it had been lighter I am sure everyone would have noticed it.  At all events, there he knelt, not three feet from the lady, looking at her as if his heart would break.  But I do not believe she saw him, for she never looked his way.  Afterwards everybody got up again, and we hurried to get out of the Chapel; but I noticed that the tall old foreigner gave his arm to the beautiful lady, and when they had pushed their way through the gate that leads into the body of the church, they did not go away but stood aside for the crowd to pass.  Nino said he would wait for De Pretis, and immediately turned his whole attention to the foreign girl, hiding himself in the shadow and never taking his eyes from her.

I never saw Nino look at a woman before as though she interested him in the least, or I would not have been surprised now to see him lost in admiration of the fair girl.  I was close to him and could see his face, and it had a new expression on it that I did not know.  The people were almost gone and the lights were being extinguished when De Pretis came round the corner, looking for us.  But I was astonished to see him bow low to the foreigner and the young lady, and then stop and enter into conversation with them.  They spoke quite audibly, and it was about a lesson that the young lady had missed.  She spoke like a Roman, but the old gentleman made himself understood in a series of stiff phrases, which he fired out of his mouth like discharges of musketry.

“Who are they?” whispered Nino to me, breathless with excitement and trembling from head to foot.  “Who are they, and how does the maestro know them?”

“Eh, caro mio, what am I to know?” I answered indifferently.  “They are some foreigners, some pupil of De Pretis, and her father.  How should I know?”

“She is a Roman,” said Nino between his teeth.  “I have heard foreigners talk.  The old man is a foreigner, but she—­she is Roman,” he repeated with certainty.

“Eh,” said I, “for my part she may be Chinese.  The stars will not fall on that account.”  You see, I thought he had seen her before, and I wanted to exasperate him by my indifference so that he should tell me; but he would not, and indeed I found out afterwards that he had really never seen her before.