excepting Agostino, who had been kind to her.  She had smiled upon the unkempt child, and given her the coveted necklace, and Chiquita loved her for it, while she adored her beauty.  Isabelle’s sweet countenance, so angelically mild and pure, exercised a wonderful influence over the neglected little savage, who had always been surrounded by fierce, haggard faces, expressive of every evil passion, and disfigured by indulgence in the lowest vices, and excesses of every kind.

“But how does it happen that you are here, Chiquita?” asked Isabelle, after a short silence.  “Were you sent to keep guard over me?”

“No, I came alone and of my own accord,” answered Chiquita, “because I saw the light and fire.  I was tired of lying all cramped up in a corner, and keeping quiet, while those beastly men drank bottle after bottle of wine, and gorged themselves with the good things set before them.  I am so little, you know, so young and slender, that they pay no more attention to me than they would to a kitten asleep under the table.  While they were making a great noise I slipped quietly away unperceived.  The smell of the wine and the food sickened me.  I am used to the sweet perfume of the heather, and the pure resinous odour of the pines.  I cannot breathe in such an atmosphere as there is down below there.”

“And you were not afraid to wander alone, without a light, through the long, dark corridors, and the lonely, deserted rooms?”

“Chiquita does not know what it is to be afraid—­her eyes can see in the dark, and her feet never stumble.  The very owls shut their eyes when they meet her, and the bats fold their wings when she comes near their haunts.  Wandering ghosts stand aside to let her pass, or turn back when they see her approaching.  Night is her comrade and hides no secrets from her, and Chiquita never betrays them to the day.”

Her eyes flashed and dilated as she spoke, and Isabelle looked at her with growing wonder, not unmixed with a vague sensation of fear.

“I like much better to stay here, in this heavenly quiet, by the fire with you,” continued the child, “than down there in all the uproar.  You are so beautiful that I love to look at you-you are like the Blessed Virgin that I have seen shining above the altar.  Only from afar though, for they always chase me out of the churches with the dogs, because I am so shabby and forlorn.  How white your hand is!  Mine looks like a monkey’s paw beside it—­and your hair is as fine and soft as silk, while mine is all rough and tangled.  Oh!  I am so horribly ugly—­you must think so too.”

“No, my dear child,” Isabelle replied, touched by her naive expressions of affection and admiration, “I do not think so.  You have beauty too—­you only need to make yourself neat and clean to be as pretty a little girl as one would wish to see.”

“Do you really think so?  Are you telling me true?  I would steal fine clothes if they would make me pretty, for then Agostino would love me.”