How she learned to loathe the sight of a bridal procession; and how she taught mother and maid to tremble at the passing of the same!  How the news of a projected marriage stirred her bile, and how her dearest friends hastened to her with any matrimonial news they could gather, or invent!  It was wonderful to see, and pleasant enough to witness—­from a distance.

Guiseppina and her mother occupied a small flat in Via Santa Teresa:  Guiseppina’s bed-room and their one sitting-room looking into the street; her mother’s room, the kitchen and a sort of coal-hole in which the servant slept being at the back of the house.

It was summer.  People pushed perspiringly for the shady side of the street, puffed and panted under pillar and portico.  The public gardens were besieged; fans fluttered everywhere; iced-beer and pezzi duri were in constant requisition.

It was on a Friday afternoon.  Guiseppina had sunk, exhausted with the heat and exasperated with the flies, into a large arm-chair opposite her bed, and was sitting there fanning herself violently and trying to catch a breath of fresh air from the widely-opened window beside her.  But there was no air, fresh or otherwise; and nothing but the languid steps of the passers in the street below was heard.  Not the roll of a wheel, the hoof of a horse, or the yelp of a dog.  It seemed as if the whole place had been given over to the cruel glare of sunshine and the persevering impertinence of flies.

It was just one of those days which make one long intensely for the shade of ilexes upon the sea shore, and the swish of idle waters upon the beach.

And Guiseppina did long, and had longed, and had finally driven her poor mother in tears to her room with reproaches for not being able to go for a month to Pegli, as, that very morning, their upper floor neighbours, the Castelles, had gone—­and—­and—­and—­:  the usual litany—­the usual nagging—­the usual temper; hinc ille lacrimae.

“Why should she alone,” she exclaimed to herself sitting there, “remain to roast in town, while all her friends—?  Ah, it was too cruel!  If she could only—!”

Her eyes fell upon the little picture of Saint Antonio hanging over her bed—­the Saint credited with presiding over marriages—­the Saint to which, through all these long years, Guiseppina had daily appealed and prayed.  Alas, all in vain!  Not the shadow of a lover had he sent her—­not the ghost of an offer had he vouchsafed her in return for all her tears and tapers.

She looked across at the Saint, this time with a scowl, however.  The Saint seemed to return her gaze with a mocking smile.  No!  That was indeed adding insult to injury!  After thirty years unswerving devotion, to mock at her thus!

She didn’t say thirty years, mind, though she could have added somewhat to the figure without risking a fib.  She said something else, a something that didn’t sound exactly like a blessing; and, in a sudden fit of rage, started from her seat, sprang across the room, tore the offending Saint from the nail from which he had dangled for such long years, and, without further ceremony, flung him out through the open window into the street below.