“You are quite mistaken,” said the Baroness drily.

Sabina looked at her in surprise.

“I thought he was a distinguished architect and engineer,” she answered.

“Yes.  But he was never poor, and he will be very rich some day.”

“Indeed!” Sabina seemed rather disappointed at the information.

There was a little pause, and the Baroness looted at her unfinished letter as if she wished that Sabina would go away.  She had foreseen that before long the girl would make some protest against her position as a perpetual guest in the house, but had no clear idea of how to meet it.  Sabina seemed so very decided.

“We have done our best to make you feel at home, like one of the family,” the Baroness said presently, in a rather injured tone.

Sabina did not wish to be one of the family at all, but she knew that she was under great obligations to her hosts, and she did not wish to be thought ungrateful.

“You have been more than kind,” she answered gently, “and I shall never forget it.  You have taken more trouble with me in two or three months than my mother in all my life.  Please do not imagine that I am not thankful for all you have done.”

The words were spoken sincerely, and when Sabina was very much in earnest there was something at once convincing and touching in her voice.  The Baroness’s sallow cheek actually flushed with pleasure, and she was impelled to leave her seat and kiss Sabina affectionately.  She was restrained by a reasonable doubt as to the consequences of such demonstrative familiarity, though she would not have hesitated to kiss the girl’s mother under like circumstances.

“It was the least we could do,” she said, knowing very well that the phrase meant nothing.

“Excuse me,” Sabina objected, “but there was no reason in the world why you should do anything at all for me!  In the natural course of things I should either have been sent to the country with my sister-in-law, or to the convent with Clementina.”

“You would have been very unhappy, my dear child.”

“I do not know which would have been worse,” said Sabina frankly.  “They both hate me, and I hate them.”

“Dear me!” exclaimed the Baroness, shocked again, or pretending to be.

“In our family,” Sabina answered calmly, “we all hate each other.”

“I am sure your sister Clementina is far too religious to feel hatred for any one.”

“You do not know her!” Sabina laughed, and looked at the ceiling.  “She hates ‘the wicked’ with a mortal hatred!”

“Perhaps you mean that she hates wickedness, my dear,” suggested the Baroness in a moralizing tone.

“Not at all!” laughed the young girl.  “She would like to destroy everybody who is not like her, and she would begin with her own family.  She used to tell me that I was doomed to eternal flames because I loved my canary better than I loved her.  I did.  It was quite true.  As for my brother, she said he was wicked, too.  I quite believe he is, but she had a friendly understanding with him, because they used to make Signor Sassi get money for them both.  In the end they got so much that there was nothing left.  Her share all went to convents and extraordinary charities, and his went heaven knows where!”