The old Marchesa Lanfredi, who took the young Contessa under her roof, and under her care, was not a bad sort of woman in the main; but she was thoroughly and consistently worldly, and judged everything from a worldly point of view.  The Contessa Marliani was an important little lady in her eyes; and was treated, by her with an indulgence and consideration which she would have considered out of place in the case of a child not born to such expectations and such a destiny.  She was not contented with her young relative; but was more perplexed and puzzled by her than angered.  And as Violante grew towards womanhood, her great-aunt understood her less and less.

In the first place, she had a much stronger tendency towards devotion than the Marchese Lanfredi thought either natural or becoming in a young woman.  Of course it was right and proper to pay due attention to one’s religious duties; there was no necessity to tell her, a Cardinal Archbishop’s sister, that, it was to be supposed.  But she had a strong objection to excess in such matters.  And to her mind Violante carried her devotional practices, and yet more her devotional ideas, to excess.  Of the latter, indeed, the old Marchesa Lanfredi disapproved altogether.  Young people had no ideas upon the subject in her time;—­and the world was certainly a better world then than it had been since.

And then, worst of all, it gradually became evident to the Marchesa’s mind that there was a more or less direct connection in the way of cause and effect between her niece’s religious notions and feelings and the strange readiness she had shown to find objections to both of the two persons who had been judged by her family to be admissible suitors for her hand.  The Marchesa began to entertain a strong apprehension that her niece had conceived the idea of “entering into religion;” i.e. of becoming a nun.

It had been necessary at the time of Violante’s first coming to live with her aunt, to select a governess for her; and a lady had been found fitted to teach her all that it was proper for a noble young Italian lady to know.  But when she became seventeen it was judged expedient to change this lady for another.  A different sort of person was required.  Custom and the habits of life and convenience of the Marchesa made it expedient that a duenna should be provided to attend on the young Contessa; but she was supposed no longer to need an instructress.

The person selected for this trust was not perhaps altogether such as might have been desired.  By some fatality, arising probably from some latent incompatibility between the institution itself and the eternal order of things, it would seem as if the persons entrusted with that responsible situation rarely did turn out to be exactly the right people in the right place.  Perhaps in the case of the young Contessa Violante her great-aunt had sought to find some attendant and companion for her who should have a tendency to correct that too great proclivity to retirement from the world—­to a life in which religion was the chief interest and occupation, and to a sad and unhopeful view of the world around and before her—­which she lamented in her niece.  If so, the choice she made was not followed by the results she hoped from it; and was attended by other inconveniences.