Nino very soon found out that she meant to read literature very seriously, and, what is more, she meant to read it in her own way.  She was as different from her father as possible in everything else, but in a despotic determination to do exactly as she liked, she resembled him.  Nino was glad that he was not called upon to use his own judgment, and there he sat, content to look at her, twisting his hands together below the table to concentrate his attention and master himself; and he read just what she told him to read, expounding the words and phrases she could not understand.  I dare say that with his hair well brushed, and his best coat, and his eyes on the book, he looked as proper as you please.  But if the high-born young lady had returned the glances he could not refrain from bending upon her now and then, she would have seen a lover, if she could see at all.

She did not see.  The haughty Prussian damsel hardly noticed the man, for she was absorbed by the professor.  Her small ears were all attention, and her slender fingers made notes with a common pencil, so that Nino wondered at the contrast between the dazzling white hand and the smooth, black, varnished instrument of writing.  He took no account of time that day, and was startled by the sound of the mid-day gun and the angry clashing of the bells.  The contessina looked up suddenly and met his eyes, but it was the boy that blushed.

“Would you mind finishing the canto?” she asked.  “There are only ten lines more—­” Mind!  Nino flushed with pleasure.

“Anzi—­by all means,” he cried.  “My time is yours, signorina.”

When they had done he rose, and his face was sad and pale again.  He hated to go, but he was only a teacher, and at his first lesson, too.  She also rose, and waited for him to leave the room.  He could not hold his tongue.

“Signorina—­” he stammered, and checked himself.  She looked at him, to listen, but his heart smote him when he had thus arrested her attention.  What could he say as he stood bowing?  It was sufficiently stupid, what he said.

“I shall have the honour of returning to-morrow, the day after to-morrow, I would say.”

“Yes,” said she, “I believe that is the arrangement.  Good-morning, Signor Professore.”  The title of professor rang strangely in his ear.  Was there the slightest tinge of irony in her voice?  Was she laughing at his boyish looks?  Ugh! the thought tingled.  He bowed himself out.

That was the first lesson, and the second was like it, I suppose, and a great many others about which I knew nothing, for I was always occupied in the middle of the day, and did not ask where he went.  It seemed to me that he was becoming a great dandy, but as he never asked me for any money from the day he learnt to copy music I never put any questions.  He certainly had a new coat before Christmas, and gloves, and very nice boots, that made me smile when I thought of the day when he arrived, with only one shoe—­and it had a hole in it as big as half his foot.  But now he grew to be so careful of his appearance that Mariuccia began to call him the “signorino.”  De Pretis said he was making great progress, and so I was contented, though I always thought it was a sacrifice for him to be a singer.