"Looks like dead, signorina," said the man, shrugging his shoulders Italian fashion. "Best fetch the police: dead people give trouble to the most innocent."
"Oh, no, no; she is not dead, indeed!" said Margaret, earnestly.
"That's not what you said when the signorina nursed you through the ague, ungrateful pig!" exclaimed the man's wife, with charming candor. "What shall we do, lady?"
"If I could get her somewhere out of the street," said Margaret, anxiously. "I think she has fainted from hunger."
"Like enough," said the man. "It's a most popular complaint, lady!"
"I'll take her to our rooms, signorina," said the woman promptly. "Lift her, Tonelli!"
The husband obeyed with half sullen resignation, and the pair carried Lottie to a house in one of the small streets. They laid her on the bed; and Margaret, after dispatching the man to her house for wine and food, and setting the woman to light a fire, threw her fur cloak over the girl, and then, and not till then, carried a light close to her.
As she did so the lamp nearly fell to the ground, for she recognized in the girl she had rescued, the woman who had dealt her the blow that had wrecked her life. There, lying motionless and senseless, was Blair's real wife!
She set the lamp down and staggered back to a chair.
"The signorina is tired and ill!" exclaimed the woman of the house, gazing at her sympathetically. "Will not the signorina leave the girl to my care, and go home to rest? You wear yourself out for the poor, lady!"