“That may be.  I know nought of Naples; but I know what my court should have been, were I what—­what I am not, and may never be!  The banquet vessels should have been of gold; the cups jewelled to the brim; not an inch of the rude pavement should have been visible; all should have glowed with cloth of gold.  The fountain in the court should have showered up the perfumes of the East; my pages should not have been rough youths, blushing at their own uncouthness, but fair boys, who had not told their twelfth year, culled from the daintiest palaces of Rome; and, as for the music, oh, Lucia!—­each musician should have worn a chaplet, and deserved it; and he who played best should have had a reward, to inspire all the rest—­a rose from me.  Saw you, too, the Lady Giulia’s robe?  What colours! they might have put out the sun at noonday!—­yellow, and blue, and orange, and scarlet!  Oh, sweet Saints!—­but my eyes ached all the next day!”

“Doubtless, the Lady Giulia lacks your skill in the mixture of colours,” said the complaisant waiting-woman.

“And then, too, what a mien!—­no royalty in it!  She moved along the hall, so that her train well nigh tripped her every moment; and then she said, with a foolish laugh, ’These holyday robes are but troublesome luxuries.’  Troth, for the great there should be no holyday robes; ’tis for myself, not for others, that I would attire!  Every day should have its new robe, more gorgeous than the last;—­every day should be a holyday!”

“Methought,” said Lucia, “that the Lord Giovanni Orsini seemed very devoted to my Lady.”

“He! the bear!”

“Bear, he may be! but he has a costly skin.  His riches are untold.”

“And the fool knows not how to spend them.”

“Was not that the young Lord Adrian who spoke to you just by the columns, where the music played?”

“It might be,—­I forget.”

“Yet, I hear that few ladies forget when Lord Adrian di Castello woos them.”

“There was but one man whose company seemed to me worth the recollection,” answered Nina, unheeding the insinuation of the artful handmaid.

“And who was he?” asked Lucia.

“The old scholar from Avignon!”

“What! he with the gray beard?  Oh, Signora!”

“Yes,” said Nina, with a grave and sad voice; “when he spoke, the whole scene vanished from my eyes,—­for he spoke to me of him!”

As she said this, the Signora sighed deeply, and the tears gathered to her eyes.

The waiting-woman raised her lips in disdain, and her looks in wonder; but she did not dare to venture a reply.

“Open the lattice,” said Nina, after a pause, “and give me yon paper.  Not that, girl—­but the verses sent me yesterday.  What! art thou Italian, and dost thou not know, by instinct, that I spoke of the rhyme of Petrarch?”