“To the Signora’s health,” said he, with a courtesy that sat well on the supple shape and the dark beauty of the boy, whose homely garb, whose poverty, and whose profession seemed only the disguise of some young prince,—­and sipped the wine, and broke the fine, white bread, while his cheek was scarlet with delight at recurrence of the familiar sounds, even though in such simple phrase.

“That is a proud boy,” said Eve’s mother, when he had gone, and she paused a moment to see how Eve went on.  “He urges no one.”

“Italy is full of its troubles, mia madre.  He is the exile of a noble family,—­no other beggar would be so haughty,” looked up and answered Eve, laughing between her bars.  “Mamma, what different beings different meridians make!” she exclaimed, dropping her music.  “Is he so sweet and lofty and fiery because he has lived in the shadow of old temples,—­because, if he stumbled over a pebble in the street, it was the marble fragment of a goddess,—­because the clay of which he is made has so many times been moulded into heroes?”

“Are there no further fancies with which you can invest an image-vender?”

“But he is unique.  Did you ever see any one like him?  Daily beauty has made him beautiful.  Is that what the Doctor means, when he says a Corinthian pillar in the market-place would educate a generation better than a pulpit would?”

“They have both in Rome,” said her mother, with meaning.

“And, in spite of them, perhaps our hero cannot spell!  Yet he is more accomplished than we, mamma.  He speaks Italian beautifully,” said she, with espieglerie.

“But hardly Tuscan.”

“Silver speech for all that.  I have reached the end of my idioms, though.  I always said school was good for something, if one could only find it out,” she archly cried, her little fingers running in arpeggios up the keys.  “To think he understood them so!  Then Dante’s women would.”

“Heaven forbid!”

“How his face glows at them,—­like a light behind a mask!  It is quite the opera, when he comes.  I will sing to him an aria, and then it will make a scene.”

“You are a madcap.  What do you want a scene for?”

“Spice.  When my voice fills his handsome eyes with tears, he makes me an artist; when he turns upon you in that sudden, ardent air, he brings a sting of foreign fire into this quiet summer noon.”

“Amuse yourself sparingly with other people’s emotions, Eve.”

“Especially when they are suave as olive-oil, pungent as cherry-cordial, and ready to blaze with a spark, you know.  Ah, it is all as interesting to me as when the little sweep last year looked out from the chimney-top and made the whole sky brim over with his wild music.”

Here a clock chimed silverly from below.

“There is the half-hour striking, and you have lost all this time,” said the caressing mother, her fingers lost in the bright locks she lifted.