“Who told you?”
“You did! You looked so pleased with yourself! Oh, do tell me all about her!”
“Well, I’ve had a long talk with the woman. Shall we walk up and down?”
And off they went, with that absence of ceremony which characterises life on 29 shipboard, leaving Mr. DeWitt to bury his cities all unaided and unapplauded. Then, as the two walked up and down,—literally up and down, for the ship was pitching a bit, and sometimes they were labouring up-hill, and sometimes they were running down a steep incline,—as they walked up and down Mr. Grey told his story.
The woman, Giuditta, had confided to him all she knew, and he had surmised more. Giuditta had known the family only since the time, three years ago, when she had been called in to take care of the little Cecilia during the illness of the Signora. The father had been a handsome good-for-nothing, who had got shot in a street row in that quarter of New York known as “Little Italy.” He was nothing,—niente, niente;—but the Signora! Oh, if the gentleman could but have known the Signora, so beautiful, so patient, so sad! Giuditta had stayed with her and shared her fortunes, which were all, alas! misfortunes,—and had nursed her through a long decline. But never 30 a word had she told of her own origin,—the beautiful Signora,—nor had her father’s name ever passed her lips. Had she known that she was dying, perhaps then, for the child’s sake, she might have forgotten her pride. But she was always thinking she should get well,—and then, one day, she died!
There was very little left,—only a few dollars; but among the squalid properties of the pitiful little stage where the poor young thing had enacted the last act of her tragedy, was one picture, a Madonna, with the painter’s name, G. Bellini, just decipherable. It was a little picture, twelve inches by sixteen, in a dingy old frame, and not a pretty picture at that. But a kind man, a dealer in antiquities, had given Giuditta one hundred dollars for it. “Think of that, Signore! One hundred dollars for an ugly little black picture no bigger than that!”
“I suppose,” Mr. Grey remarked, as they stood balancing themselves at an angle of many degrees,—“I suppose that the picture was genuine,—else the man 31 would hardly have paid one hundred dollars for it.”
“And would it be worth more than that?”
“A trifle,” he replied, rather grimly. “Somewhere among the thousands.”
“But why should they have kept such a picture when they were so poor? Why didn’t they sell it?”