"Ah, you do come to me sometimes, don't you?" she said, with her

embroidered handkerchief at her lips. "What is this I hear about the

carriage and horses? Sold them! It is incredible. I will not believe it

unless you tell me so yourself."

"It is quite true, Aunt Betsy. I wanted money for various purposes, and

among others to pay my debts," said Roma.

"Goodness! It's true! Give me my salts. There they are--on the

card-table beside you.... So it's true! It's really true! You've done

some extraordinary things already, miss, but this ... Mercy me! Selling

her horses! And she isn't ashamed of it!... I suppose you'll sell your

clothes next, or perhaps your jewels."

"That's just what I want to do, Aunt Betsy."

"Holy Virgin! What are you saying, girl? Have you lost all sense of

decency? Sell your jewels! Goodness! Your ancestral jewels! You must

have grown utterly heartless as well as indifferent to propriety, or you

wouldn't dream of selling the treasures that have come down to you from

your own mother's breast, as one might say."

"My mother never set eyes on any of them, auntie, and if some of them

belonged to my grandmother, she must have been a good woman because she

was the mother of my father, and she would rather see me sell them all

than live in debt and disgrace."

"Go on! Go on with your English talk! Or perhaps it's American, is it?

You want to kill me, that's what it is! You will, too, and sooner than

you expect, and then you'll be sorry and ashamed ... Go away! Why do you

come to worry me? Isn't it enough ... Natalina! Nat-a-lina!"

Late that night Roma resumed her letter to David Rossi:

"DEAREST,--You are always the last person I speak to before I go

to bed, and if only my words could sail away over Monte Mario in

the darkness while I sleep, they would reach you on the wings of

the morning.

"You want to know all that is happening, and here goes again. The

tyrannies of military rule increase daily, and some of its

enormities are past belief. Military court sat all day yesterday

and polished off eighty-five poor victims. Ten of them got ten

years, twenty got five years, and about fifty got periods of one

month to twelve.

"Lawyer Napoleon F. was here this afternoon to say that he had

seen Bruno and begun work in his defence. Strangely enough he

finds a difficulty in a quarter from which it might least be

expected. Bruno himself is holding off in some unaccountable way

which gives Napoleon F. an idea that the poor soul is being got

at. Apparently--you will hardly credit it--he is talking

doubtfully about you, and asking incredible questions about his

wife. Lawyer Napoleon actually inquired if there was 'anything in

it,' and the thing struck me as so silly that I laughed out in his

face. It was very wrong of me not to be jealous, wasn't it? Being

a woman, I suppose I ought to have leapt at the idea, according to

all the natural laws of love. I didn't, and my heart is still

tranquil. But poor Bruno was more human, and Napoleon has an idea

that something is going on inside the prison. He is to go there

again to-morrow and to let me know.




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