Constance Fenimore Woolson

“ Even Peter, who did not like foreign servants, liked Carmela; he said she was "so spry!"
"Is everything ready?" inquired Miss Senter, as she met her deputy.
"Yes, signorina, everything," answered Carmela, briskly. She was looking her very best and tightest, all black and white, with black silk stockings showing above her little high-heeled shoes. As she spoke she put her hands in their black lace mitts in the pockets of her apron, and, middle-aged though she was said to be, she looked at that moment like a smart French soubrette of the stage. ”

“ That Eva should suffer so cruelly when she, Fanny, would have made any sacrifice to save her from it, would have died for her gladly, were it not that she was the girl's only protector—oh, what fate had come over their happy life together! She had not the heart to be stern. All she said was, "We will go away, dear; we will go away."
"No," said Eva, rising; "let me stay here. You need not be afraid."
"Of course I am not afraid," answered Fanny, gravely. "My daughter will never do anything unseemly; she has too much pride." ”

“ Then, after a moment, "I will stay with him," he added; "you go up with Miss Marcy."
"I want Aunt Lizzie to stay—not Uncle Stephen!" called the boy, overhearing this, and turning round to scowl at them.
"He will not be good with any one but me," said Mrs. Lenox, in a low tone. "You two go up; I will wait for you here."
"The question is, Is he ever good, even with her?" said Claudia, following Lenox up the long flight of steps that winds in square turns up, up, to the top of the campanile.
"She says he is sometimes very sweet and docile—even affectionate," replied Lenox. ”

“ Eva said to everybody. She looked indescribably beautiful; it was the radiance of a complete happiness, like a halo.
By three o'clock they were gone, they were crossing the bay in the little Naples steamer. No one was left at the villa with Fanny—it was her own arrangement—save Horace Bartholomew.
"She won't mind being poor," he said, consolingly, "she won't mind anything—with him. It is one of those sudden, overwhelming loves that one sometimes sees; and after all, Fanny, it is the sweetest thing life offers." ”

“ Suddenly she brandished her lean arms. "You Denza there, with your stored-up money made from my starvation—yam!—mine, how dare you be so silent, figure of a mule? Starvation! yes, indeed. Wait and I'll show you my arms, Pietro; wait and I'll show you my ribs—yam!"
"You keep yourself covered up, Granmar," said Prudence, tucking her in; "you'll do yourself a mischief in this cold weather."
"Ahi!" said Granmar, "and do I care? If I could live to see you drowned, I'd freeze and be glad. Stored-up money! stored-up money!" ”

“ You must look at it with Punta Palmas eyes, Fanny; at Punta Palmas it would be an ordinary event."
"But my Eva is not a Punta Palmas girl, Horace Bartholomew!"
"She is as innocent as one, and I'll answer for Rod. Come, be sensible, Fanny. They will be back before sunset, and no one in Sorrento—if that is what is troubling you so—need be any the wiser."
"You do not know all," said Fanny. "Oh, Horace—I must tell somebody—she fancies she cares for that man!" She wrung her hands again. "Couldn't we follow them? Get a boat." ”

“ Surely the signorina knows that Ercole has the soul of a gentleman," whispered Carmela, reproachfully.
And it was true that Miss Senter had always thought that her chief gondolier possessed a great deal of natural refinement.
"Will the signorina step out for a moment and look at him?" pursued the deputy, her whisper now a little dejected. "If he is to be disappointed, poor fellow, may he at least have that pleasure?"
The idea of the gondolier's disappointment touched the amiable American. She turned her head and glanced into the drawing-room; all was going on gayly; no one had missed her. ”

“ Fanny paid no attention to what he was saying. Every now and then broken phrases of her own burst from her: "How much good will her perfect French and Italian, her German, Spanish, and even Russian, do her down in that barbarous wilderness?"—"In her life she has never even buttoned her boots. Do they think she can make bread?"—"And there was Gino. And poor Pierre." Then, suddenly, "But it shall not be!"
"I have been wondering why you did not take that tone from the first," said Bartholomew. "She is very young. She has been brought up to obey you implicitly. ”

“ The younger servants asserted that the slight pink tint on the tidy little woman's cheeks was artificial. However that may have been, Carmela, as she stood, was the personification of trimness and activity. Untiring and energetic, she was a wonderful worker; Miss Senter, who had been much in Italy, appreciated her good-fortune in having secured for her Venetian house-keeping such a coadjutor as this. Carmela was scrupulously neat, and she was even more scrupulously honest, never abstracting so much as a pin; she economized for her mistress with her whole soul, and kept watch over every detail ”

“ He has got no money; he has never been anywhere that you call anywhere; he doesn't know anything about the only life you care for nor the things you think important. All the same, he is a man in a million. He is a man—not a puppet."
Gentle Mrs. Churchill appeared for the moment transformed. She looked as though she could strike him. "Never mind your Quixotic ideas. Tell me whether he is in love with Eva; it all depends upon that."
"I don't know, I am sure," answered Bartholomew. ”

“ A man? A man to be faint like a girl? Ha, ha! it makes me laugh!"
"Go and get it," repeated Miss Senter, taking the train over her own arm. She knew that Carmela did not like the cook. Jealousy was the one fault the hard-working little creature possessed. "She has tried to make me dismiss Giorgio more than once," she said to her brother, in confidence; "but I always pretend not to see the feeling that influences her. It is only Giorgio she is jealous of; she gets on perfectly well with Luigi, and with Assunta and Beppa; while for Ercole she can never do enough. She is devoted to Ercole!" ”

“ How they learned I was in Rome I cannot imagine; but, knowing it, I suppose they thought that Miss Macks and I would meet, as necessarily as we should if together in their own village. The letter assures me that the girl is a great genius; that all she needs is an opportunity. They even take the ground that it will be a privilege for me to know her! But I am mortally tired of young geniuses; we have so many here in Rome! So I told her at once that I knew nothing of modern art—in fact, detested it—but that in any other way I should be delighted to be of use. ”

“ Then, with his unfailing politeness, he included Mademoiselle. "She is clever, Mademoiselle?"
"She is good," answered Mademoiselle, gravely. "Her heart has a depth—but a depth!"
"I shall fill it all," murmured Pierre to Eva. "It is not that I myself am anything, but my love is so great, so vast; it holds you as the sea holds Capri. ”

“ Fanny, then, with all her sense, was going to make that same old mistake of supposing that a bachelor of thirty-seven and a mother of thirty-seven were of the same age.
"Why, it's infinitely better in every way that a nice girl like Eva should be married as soon as possible after her school-books are closed, Philip," Mrs. Churchill went on; "for then, don't you see, she can enter society—which is always so dangerous—safely; well protected, and yet quite at liberty as well. I mean, of course, in case she has a good husband. ”

“ Lenox now came out, and the gondola started. Claudia looked back and waved her hand, Mrs. Lenox returning the salutation.
On the evening of the third day, at eleven o'clock, a gondola from the railway station stopped at the larger palace's lower door, and three persons ascended the dimly lighted stairs.
At the top Mrs. Lenox's servant was waiting for them. "Oh, where is signore? Is he not with you? He has not come? Oh, the poor signora—may the sweet Madonna help her now!" cried the girl, with tears in her sympathetic Italian eyes. "The poor little boy is dead." ”

“ There is one thing more I should like to ask," she added, as they turned towards the door, "and that is that you would not call me Miss Macks. I am not used to it, and it sounds strangely; no one ever called me that in Tuscolee."
"What did they call you in Tuscolee?"
"They called me Miss Ettie; my name is Ethelinda Faith. But my friends and older people called me just 'Ettie'; I wish you would, too."
"I am certainly older," replied Noel, gravely (he was thirty-three) ; "but I do not like Ettie. With your permission, I will call you Faith." ”

“ It was not yet nine o'clock, a warm dark night; though still September, the odors of autumn were already in the air, coming from the September flowers, which have a pungency mingled with their perfume, from the rank ripeness of the vegetables, from the aroma of the ground after the first rains.
"I could have made thirty cents a week more at the shop," she said to herself, regretfully (she always translated the Italian money into American or French) . "In a month that would have been a dollar and twenty cents! Well, there's no use thinking about it sence I can't go." ”

“ The pink villa was indeed a delicious nest, to use the Englishman's phrase. It crowned one of the perpendicular cliffs of Sorrento, its rosy façade overlooking what is perhaps the most beautiful expanse of water in the world—the Bay of Naples. The broad terrace stretched from the drawing room windows to the verge of the precipice ”

“ Prudence's mind was full of a sale she had made; but she prepared the coffee and Nounce's broth with her usual care; she washed her dishes, and made Granmar tidy for the day; finally she arranged all her sewing implements on the table by the window beside her pile of work. Now she could give herself the luxury of one last look, one last estimate; for she had made a miracle of a bargain for her figs. By ten o'clock the men would be up to gather them. ”

“ When Granmar was gorged she became temporarily more tranquil. Prudence took this time to speak of a plan which she had had in her mind for several days. "Now that Gooster and the other boys are doing for themselves, Granmar, and Bepper too at last, and Jo Vanny only needing a trifle of help now and then (he's so young yet, you know) , I feel as though I might be earning more money," she began.
"Money's a very good thing; we've never had half enough since my sainted Annunziata joined the angels," responded Granmar, with a pious air. ”

“ Guadagni surveyed the good old uncle for a moment. Then she bent over him and shouted in his ear, "I'll make you a hot fig-tart right away now, Patro, if you'll set up."
As she finished these words Granmar threw her scaldino suddenly into the centre of the kitchen, where it broke with a crash upon the bricks.
"He's going to get up," announced Prudence, triumphantly.
"He isn't any such thing; 'twas the scaldino shook him," responded Granmar, in a loud, admonitory tone. "He'll never get up again in this world unless you shout in his ear that you'll pay that money." ”

“ Nounce and Jo Vanny were the only ones among the children who had ever called her mother.
"Oh, you're up there in the shed, are you?" said Jo Vanny. "Somehow, mamma, you look very gay."
"Yes, I'm gay," answered Prudence. "Perhaps some of these days I'll tell you why." In her heart she thought: "Jo Vanny, now, he'd understand; he'd feel as I do if I should explain it to him. A nice front yard he has never seen in all his life, for they don't have 'em here. But once he knew what it was, he'd care about it as much as I do; I know he would. He's sort of American, anyhow." ”

“ Looking up to see whether her musicians had assembled on their shelf, she perceived some one at the drawing-room door; it was Carmela, hiding herself modestly behind the portière, but at the same time unmistakably beckoning to her mistress as soon as she saw that she had caught her eye. Miss Senter went to the doorway.
"Will the signorina permit? A surprise of Ercole's," whispered Carmela, eagerly, standing on tiptoe to reach her mistress's ear. "He has dressed himself as a clown, and he is of a perfection! ”

“ Eva, left alone, and mindful of nothing but her own bliss, looked so radiant with happiness that Bartholomew (being a man) could not help sympathizing with her. "You will have to give it up," he said to Fanny, significantly. Then he took his hat and went away.
Fifteen minutes later his place was filled by David Rod.
"Ah! you have come. I must have a few words of conversation with you, Mr. Rod," said Fanny, in an icy tone. "Eva, leave us now."
"Oh no, mamma, not now; never again, I hope," answered the girl. She spoke with secure confidence; her eyes were fixed upon her lover's face. ”