“However, I had not very long to strain my curiosity; for when she found out who I was, and how I held the King’s commission, and might be called an officer, her desire to tell me all was more than equal to mine of hearing it.  Many and many a day, she had longed for some one both skilful and trustworthy, most of all for some one bearing warrant from a court of justice.  But the magistrates of the neighbourhood would have nothing to say to her, declaring that she was a crack-brained woman, and a wicked, and even a foreign one.

“With many grimaces she assured me that never by her own free-will would she have lived so many years in that hateful country, where the sky for half the year was fog, and rain for nearly the other half.  It was so the very night when first her evil fortune brought her there; and so no doubt it would be, long after it had killed her.  But if I wished to know the reason of her being there, she would tell me in few words, which I will repeat as briefly.

“By birth she was an Italian, from the mountains of Apulia, who had gone to Rome to seek her fortunes, after being badly treated in some love-affair.  Her Christian name was Benita; as for her surname, that could make no difference to any one.  Being a quick and active girl, and resolved to work down her troubles, she found employment in a large hotel; and rising gradually, began to send money to her parents.  And here she might have thriven well, and married well under sunny skies, and been a happy woman, but that some black day sent thither a rich and noble English family, eager to behold the Pope.  It was not, however, their fervent longing for the Holy Father which had brought them to St. Peter’s roof; but rather their own bad luck in making their home too hot to hold them.  For although in the main good Catholics, and pleasant receivers of anything, one of their number had given offence, by the folly of trying to think for himself.  Some bitter feud had been among them, Benita knew not how it was; and the sister of the nobleman who had died quite lately was married to the rival claimant, whom they all detested.  It was something about dividing land; Benita knew not what it was.

“But this Benita did know, that they were all great people, and rich, and very liberal; so that when they offered to take her, to attend to the children, and to speak the language for them, and to comfort the lady, she was only too glad to go, little foreseeing the end of it.  Moreover, she loved the children so, from their pretty ways and that, and the things they gave her, and the style of their dresses, that it would have broken her heart almost never to see the dears again.

“And so, in a very evil hour, she accepted the service of the noble Englishman, and sent her father an old shoe filled to the tongue with money, and trusted herself to fortune.  But even before she went, she knew that it could not turn out well; for the laurel leaf which she threw on the fire would not crackle even once, and the horn of the goat came wrong in the twist, and the heel of her foot was shining.  This made her sigh at the starting-time; and after that what could you hope for?