Two voices!—­for it had so happened that when the servant, whom the Marchese Lamberto had sent to his nephew to request him to undertake this little commission for him, found the Marchese Ludovico at the door of the Circolo, the Signore Conte Leandro Lombardoni was lounging there with him.

“Bah! what a bore?  My uncle is always making himself the maestro di casa, the manager, the protector, the servant of all the world.  Tell the Marchese I’ll go directly,” he said to the servant; then added to his companion, “Come, Leandro, don’t desert me!  Let’s go together and see what these Venetian women want.”

“I ought to go to the Contessa Giulia at two.  She’ll be waiting for me, and will be furious if I disappoint her.  Never mind, what must be, must be!  I Tre Re!  Ugh, what a distance; why, it is at the other end of the town?”

“Never mind, come along; it will do you good to walk half a mile for once and away,” returned Ludovico, who knew perfectly well how much to believe about the Contessa Giulia’s despair at his friend’s non-appearance.

Thus the two young men went together to the locanda de’ Tre Re to execute the commission entrusted to his nephew by the Marchese Lamberto.

“Yes,” said a slatternly girl, who came forth from some back region at the call of the two young men, and who stared at them with an offensive mixture of surprise and understanding interest, when they inquired for the ladies recently arrived from Venice.  “Yes, they were upstairs, on the right hand, in No. 13.”  So they climbed the stairs, knocked at No. 13, were told to passare by the voice of Signora Orsola, and in the next instant were in the room with the two strangers.

The first glance at the occupants of the chamber produced a shock of surprise, which manifested itself in so sudden a change of manner and bearing in the two young men, that it would have been ludicrous to any looker-on.  The two hats came down from the two heads with a spring-like suddenness and quickness; and both the young men bowed lowly.

“Ladies,” said Ludovico, addressing himself mainly to the elder, but turning also towards the younger as he spoke, while the Conte Leandro stared unmitigatedly at Paolina; “we come to you, sent by my uncle the Marchese di Castelmare, and charged by him to assist you in finding a convenient quartiere for your residence in Ravenna.  Permit me to say on my own behalf,” he added, turning more entirely towards Paolina, “that I hope it may not be a short one!”

“If the Signorina would make her stay among us as long as we would wish it, she would never leave Ravenna any more,” said the Conte Leandro, with a glance from his sharp little eyes, and a bow of his fat person, that were meant to be quite killing.

“It is this young lady, I conclude, who has undertaken to copy some of our mosaics for the Englishman, who writes to my uncle, then?” said Ludovico with a good-humoured and bright smile.