The next morning Ursula entered the young Angelo’s chamber. “Wear again thy blue doublet today,” said she; “I would have thee look thy best. Thou shalt go with me to the palace.”
“What, today?” cried the boy joyfully, half leaping from his bed. “Dear dame Ursula, shall I really then belong to the train of the great Tribune’s lady?”
“Yes; and leave the old woman to die alone! Your joy becomes you,—but ingratitude is in your blood. Ingratitude! Oh, it has burned my heart into ashes—and yours, boy, can no longer find a fuel in the dry crumbling cinders.”
“Dear dame, you are always so biting. You know you said you wished to retire into a convent, and I was too troublesome a charge for you. But you delight in rebuking me, justly or unjustly.”
“My task is over,” said Ursula, with a deep-drawn sigh.
The boy answered not; and the old woman retired with a heavy step, and, it may be, a heavier heart. When he joined her in their common apartment, he observed what his joy had previously blinded him to—that Ursula did not wear her usual plain and sober dress. The gold chain, rarely assumed then by women not of noble birth—though, in the other sex, affected also by public functionaries and wealthy merchants—glittered upon a robe of the rich flowered stuffs of Venice, and the clasps that confined the vest at the throat and waist were adorned with jewels of no common price.
Angelo’s eye was struck by the change, but he felt a more manly pride in remarking that the old lady became it well. Her air and mien were indeed those of one to whom such garments were habitual; and they seemed that day more than usually austere and stately.
She smoothed the boy’s ringlets, drew his short mantle more gracefully over his shoulder, and then placed in his belt a poniard whose handle was richly studded, and a purse well filled with florins.
“Learn to use both discreetly,” said she; “and, whether I live or die, you will never require to wield the poniard to procure the gold.”
“This, then,” cried Angelo, enchanted, “is a real poniard to fight the robbers with! Ah, with this I should not fear Fra Moreale, who wronged thee so. I trust I may yet avenge thee, though thou didst rate me so just now for ingratitude.”