insisted on marrying him at once.  She had her way, and devoted herself to him soul and body—­ danced in the streets and sung to gain a living for herself and him; taught him to weave baskets so that he might not feel himself entirely dependent on her, and she sold these baskets for him so successfully that he was gradually making quite a little trade of them.  Poor child! for she was not much more than a child—­what a bright face she had!—­glorified by the self-denial and courage of her everyday life.  No wonder she had won the sympathy of the warmhearted and impulsive Neapolitans—­they looked upon her as a heroine of romance; and as she passed through the streets, leading her blind husband tenderly by the hand, there was not a creature in the city, even among the most abandoned and vile characters, who would have dared to offer her the least insult, or who would have ventured to address her otherwise than respectfully.  She was good, innocent, and true; how was it, I wondered dreamily, that I could not have won a woman’s heart like hers?  Were the poor alone to possess all the old world virtues—­honor and faith, love and loyalty?  Was there something in a life of luxury that sapped virtue at its root?  Evidently early training had little to do with after results, for had not my wife been brought up among an order of nuns renowned for simplicity and sanctity; had not her own father declared her to be “as pure as a flower on the altar of the Madonna;” and yet the evil had been in her, and nothing had eradicated it; for even religion, with her, was a mere graceful sham, a kind of theatrical effect used to tone down her natural hypocrisy.  My own thoughts began to harass and weary me.  I took up a volume of philosophic essays and began to read, in an endeavor to distract my mind from dwelling on the one perpetual theme.  The day wore on slowly enough; and I was glad when the evening closed in, and when Vincenzo, remarking that the night was chilly, kindled a pleasant wood-fire in my room, and lighted the lamps.  A little while before my dinner was served he handed me a letter stating that it had just been brought by the Countess Romani’s coachman.  It bore my own seal and motto.  I opened it; it was dated, “La Santissima Annunziata,” and ran as follows: 

“Beloved!  I arrived here safely; the nuns are delighted to see me, and you will be made heartily welcome when you come.  I think of you constantly—­how happy I felt this morning!  You seemed to love me so much; why are you not always so fond of your faithful

“Nina?”

I crumpled this note fiercely in my hand and flung it into the leaping flames of the newly lighted fire.  There was a faint perfume about it that sickened me—­a subtle odor like that of a civet cat when it moves stealthily after its prey through a tangle of tropical herbage.  I always detested scented note-paper—­I am not the only man who does so.  One is led to fancy that the fingers of the woman who writes upon