imagined that his father’s death must have plunged its huge precincts into silence and mourning; but as he followed the abate up successive flights of stairs and down long corridors full of shadow he heard a sound of dance music below and caught the flash of girandoles through the antechamber doors.  The thought that his father’s death had made no difference to any one in the palace was to the child so much more astonishing than any of the other impressions crowding his brain, that these were scarcely felt, and he passed as in a dream through rooms where servants were quarrelling over cards and waiting-women rummaged in wardrobes full of perfumed finery, to a bedchamber in which a lady dressed in weeds sat disconsolately at supper.

“Mamma!  Mamma!” he cried, springing forward in a passion of tears.

The lady, who was young, pale and handsome, pushed back her chair with a warning hand.

“Child,” she exclaimed, “your shoes are covered with mud; and, good heavens, how you smell of the stable!  Abate, is it thus you teach your pupil to approach me?”

“Madam, I am abashed by the cavaliere’s temerity.  But in truth I believe excessive grief has clouded his wits—­’tis inconceivable how he mourns his father!”

Donna Laura’s eyebrows rose in a faint smile.  “May he never have worse to grieve for!” said she in French; then, extending her scented hand to the little boy, she added solemnly:  “My son, we have suffered an irreparable loss.”

Odo, abashed by her rebuke and the abate’s apology, had drawn his heels together in a rustic version of the low bow with which the children of that day were taught to approach their parents.

“Holy Virgin!” said his mother with a laugh, “I perceive they have no dancing-master at Pontesordo.  Cavaliere, you may kiss my hand.  So—­that’s better; we shall make a gentleman of you yet.  But what makes your face so wet?  Ah, crying, to be sure.  Mother of God! as for crying, there’s enough to cry about.”  She put the child aside and turned to the preceptor.  “The Duke refuses to pay,” she said with a shrug of despair.

“Good heavens!” lamented the abate, raising his hands.  “And Don Lelio?” he faltered.

She shrugged again, impatiently.  “As great a gambler as my husband.  They’re all alike, abate:  six times since last Easter has the bill been sent to me for that trifle of a turquoise buckle he made such a to-do about giving me.”  She rose and began to pace the room in disorder.  “I’m a ruined woman,” she cried, “and it’s a disgrace for the Duke to refuse me.”

The abate raised an admonishing finger.  “Excellency...excellency...”

She glanced over her shoulder.