The same delicate features, the same luxuriance of hair, but—­the eyes of ’Lora! ah,—­a soul, a divinity looked out of them; but in these one saw only the metallic glitter of the innkeeper’s gold!  They turned coldly upon Herr Ritter as he stood in the doorway, and a hard ringing utterance—­again how unlike ’Lora ! for this was the dry tintinnabulation of coin—­inquired his errand.

“Herr Ritter, I am told.  You wish to speak to me?”

I observed that she allowed the old man to stand while she spoke.

“Yes; Signora,” he answered, mildly, “I bring you this letter; may I beg you will read it now, before I go? for the writer charged me to carry back to her your answer.”

He drew ’Lora’s note from his vest with a gesture of reverent tenderness, as though he loved the very paper his friend had touched, and were something loath to part with it to such indifferent hands and eyes as these.  Carlotta Nero took it coldly, and glanced through the close-written pages with the languid air of a supercilious fine lady.  Once I fancied I saw her cheek flush and her lip quiver as she read, but when she looked up again and spoke, I thought I must have been mistaken in that fancy, or else her emotion had been due to another cause than that I had imagined.  For there was no change in the ungentle glittering eyes; no softening in the dry tinkle of the voice that delivered the Signora’s answer.

“I am sorry I can do nothing for your friend.  You will tell her I have read her letter, and that I leave this place tomorrow morning.”

She inclined her head as she said this, I suppose by way of indication that the Herr might accept his dismissal; and laid the letter on an ebony console beside her sofa.  But the old German kept his ground.

“Signora,” he said, tremulously, and my blossoms thrilled through all their delicate fibres with the indignant beating of his heart; “do you know that letter comes from your sister?  That she is poor, in want, widowed, and almost dying?”

Carlotta Nero lifted her pencilled eyebrows.

“Indeed?” she said.  “I am pained to hear it.  Still I cannot do anything for her.  You may tell her so.”

“Signora, I beg you to consider.  Will you suffer the—­the fault of ten years ago to bear weight upon your sisterly kindness,—­your human compassion and sympathy, now?”

“Excuse me, Herr Ritter, I think you are talking romance.  I have no sisterly kindness, no compassion, no sympathy, for any one of—­ of this description.”

She motioned impatiently towards the letter on the console; and I thought she spoke the truth.

Her Ritter was speechless.

“Dolores chose her own path,” said the innkeeper’s wife, seeing that her visitor still waited for something more, “and she has no right to appeal to me now.  She disgraced herself deliberately, and she must take the consequences of her own act.  I will not move a finger to help her out of a condition into which she wilfully degraded herself, in spite of my most stringent remonstrances.  All imprudence brings its own punishment,—­and she must bear hers as other foolish people have to do.  She is not the only widow in the world, and she might be worse off than she is; a great deal.”