“Be sure of this,” I said sharply, “that I will suffer no word in disparagement of Donna Aurelia to be said in my presence.  Your word ‘fancy,’ as applied to her, is horrible to me.  You will take care not to repeat it.  If you choose to whisper to your friends that I have a ‘fancy’ for you, or that the marchese has purchased Fra Palamone to indulge a similar ‘fancy’ on his account, I have nothing to say.  No term of the sort is by this time too hard for me to bear; and the marchese, no doubt, can take care of himself.  But Donna Aurelia, once and for all, is to be left out of your dictionary if you can only couple her name with a degrading qualification.  Enough of that.  I am about to return to Padua, and shall take you with me as far as Condoglia.”  This was indeed my intention, for I was hurt more than I cared to own by Donna Aurelia’s reception of me, and yet knew all the time that I deserved nothing more.

Virginia listened with head hung down and clenched hands; when I had done she would have rushed headlong into speech—­but she checked herself by biting her lip forcibly.  She curtseyed to me, and went quickly out of the room.  I spent a great part of the night in the destruction of papers, collection of objects which I wished to take with me, and in committing to the flame certain others which I now knew I must do without.  Treasured memories of Aurelia went with them.  She was still in my heart, and must ever remain there, patroness of my honest intention.  Daylight was creeping over the Piazza and putting my candles to shame before I discovered how tired I was.  I blew them out, opened windows and shutters, and leaned into the sweet air.  St. Mary’s church stared hard, an unearthly black and white; the Piazza, perfectly empty, looked of enormous size.  In it the dawn-wind blew up little spirals of dust; and it was so quiet, that when a scrap of paper was whirled into the air, I heard the littering noise it made before it started on its flight.  The sky was of exquisite purity, pale as milk, with a very faint flush of rose behind the church.  In a few minutes the sun would be up from behind Vallombrosa, and all the glory of the Italian day would roll over Florence in a flood.  I felt mortally and suddenly tired, too languid to face the richness of life to come, poor and famished as I must now be.

As I was turning from the window I saw the figures of two men come out of the sharp angle of St. Mary’s and walk towards the town.  Both were tall, both in cloaks; but one wore his hat and the other carried it.  By this, as well as his drooping, deferential shoulders, I knew this latter to be the servant, the former his patron.  Midway towards the Via de’ Benci they stopped, while he of the bare head explained at length, pointing this way and that with his hat, then counting on his fingers.  I was now expert enough to be able to read an Italian conversation more quickly than I could gather it in talk.  There was no doubt what was meant.  “I shall go