Following close on Count Marescotti comes Count Nobili.  There are ease and conscious strength and freedom in his every movement.  He pauses for a moment on the uppermost step under the central arch of the atrium and gazes round.  The sun strikes upon his fresh-complexioned face and lights up his fair hair and restless eyes.—­It is clear to see no care has yet troubled that curly head of his.—­Nobili is closely followed by a lady of mature age, dark, thin, and sharp-featured.  She has a glass in her eye, with which she peers at every thing and everybody.  This is the Marchesa Boccarini.  She is followed by her three daughters; two of them of no special attraction, but the youngest, Nera, dark and strikingly handsome.  These three young ladies, all matrimonially inclined, but Nera specially, had carefully watched the instant when Nobili left his seat.  Then they had followed him closely.  It was intended that he should escort them home.  Nera has already decided what she will say to him touching the Orsetti ball that evening and the cotillon, which she means to dance with him if she can.  But Nobili, with whom they come up under the portico, merely responds to their salutation with a low bow, raises his hat, and stands aside to make way for them.  He does not even offer to hand them to their carriage.  They pass, and are gone.

As Count Nobili descends the three steps into the piazza, he is conscious that all eyes are fixed upon him; that every head is uncovered.  He pauses, casts his eyes round at the upturned faces, raises his hat and smiles, then puts his hand into his pocket, and takes out a gold-piece, which he gives to the nearest beggar.  The beggar, seizing the gold-piece, blesses him, and hopes that “Heaven will render to him according to his merits.”  Other beggars, from every corner, are about to rush upon him; but Nobili deftly escapes from these as he had escaped from the Marchesa Boccarini and her daughters, and is gone.

“A lucky face,” mumbles old Carlotta, working her under lip, as she fixes her bleared eyes on him—­“a lucky face!  He will choose the winning number in the lottery, and the evil eye will never harm him.”

The music had now ceased.  The mass was over.  The vast congregation poured through the triple doors into the piazza, and mingled with the outer crowd.  For a while both waved to and fro, like billows on a rolling sea, then settled down into one compact current, which, flowing onward, divided and dispersed itself through the openings into the various streets abutting on the piazza.

Last of all, Carlotta, Brigitta, and Cassandra, leave their corner.  They are speedily engulfed in the shadows of a neighboring alley, and are seen no more.

CHAPTER IV.

THE MARCHESA GUINIGI.

The stern and repulsive aspect of the exterior of the Marchesa Guinigi’s palace belied the antique magnificence within.