Count Nobili and the servant passed through many lofty rooms of faded splendor.  Chandeliers hung from vaulted ceilings, and reflected the light of the brass lamp on a thousand crystal facets.  The tall mirrors in the antique frames repeated it.  In a cavern-like saloon, hung with rows of dark pictures upon amber satin, Nobili and the servant stopped before a door.  The servant knocked; A voice said, “Enter.”  It was the voice of Marchesa Boccarini.  She was sitting with her three daughters.  A lamp, with a colored shade, stood in the centre of a small room, bearing some aspect of life and comfort.  The marchesa and two of her daughters were working at some mysterious garments, which rapidly vanished out of sight.  Nera was leaning back on a sofa, superbly idle—­staring idly at an opposite window, where the daylight still lingered.  When Count Nobili was announced, they all rose and spoke together with the loud peacock voices, and the rapid utterance, which in Italy are supposed to mark a special welcome.  Strange that in the land of song the talking voices of women should be so harsh and strident!  Yet so it is.

“How long is it since we have seen you, Count Nobili?” It was the sad-faced marchesa who spoke, and tried to smile a welcome to him.  “I have to thank you for many inquiries, and all sorts of luxuries sent to my dear child.  But we expected you.  You never came.”

The two sisters echoed, “You never came.”

Nera did not speak then, but when they had finished, she rose from the sofa and stood before Nobili drawn up to her full height, radiant in sovereign beauty.  “I have to thank you most.”  As Nera spoke, her cheeks flushed, and she dropped her hand into his.  It was a simple act, but full of purpose as Nera did it.  Nera intended it should be so.  She reseated herself.  As his eye met hers, Nobili grew crimson.  The twilight and the shaded lamp hid this in part, but Nera observed it, and noted it for future use.

Count Nobili placed himself beside the marchesa.

“I am overwhelmed with shame,” he said.  “What you say is too true.  I had intended coming.  Indeed, I waited until your daughter”—­and he glanced at Nera—­“could receive me, and satisfy me herself she was not hurt.  I longed to make my penitent excuses for the accident.”

“Oh! it was nothing,” said Nera, with a smile, answering for her mother.

“What I suffered, no words can tell,” continued, Nobili.  “Even now I shudder to think of it—­to be the cause—­”

“No, not the cause,” answered Marchesa Boccarini.

The elder sisters echoed—­

“Not the cause.”

“It was the ribbon,” continued the marchesa.  “Nera was entangled with the ribbon when she rose; she did not know it.”

“I ought to have held her up,” returned Nobili with a glance at Nera, who, with a kind of queenly calm, looked him full in the face with her bold, black eyes.

“I assure you, marchesa, it was the horror of what I had done that kept me from calling on you.”