"On the table, too, she danced, all among the wine and the flowers—and me, too. The gentlemen made me, old Pieto, dance with her, and, as we danced, she sang the tune—how did it go?—yes," and the ancient broke out into a wheezing treble of a weird and sensuous melody, ending in a harsh chuckle as his wife left the room, taking her bundle with her.
Candles had been set upright in the sconces and shed a soft light on the handsome old apartment, to which duster and broom soon gave a look of respectability. The old woman paused and surveyed her work.
"And where is she to be put?" she asked the figure by the fire, who, with goblet in hand, had fallen again to his humming.
"Eh—oh," and he pointed to the ceiling. "Above here, I suppose, for the present—the Duchess room. Hurry, Teresa, it'll be daylight soon. Put a fire up there, the room will be damp—ugh!"
"Ah, you can shiver, Pieto. Why don't you work and get warmth into your old blood? Get me a few logs from the outhouse, won't you? I don't like rats."
"Ay, I'll do that for you. Get you upstairs. I'll bring them up."
Pieto relit the lantern, and his shuffling footsteps died away down the stone passage. There was a creak of rusty bolts and a gust of the chill air that comes before the dawn flickered the candles in the dining-room.
Outside, the old man made his way across a paved court-yard, the stones of which were worn and cracked with age, and little blades of tender green showed between the crevices. One side of the yard was colonnaded, and the moonlight cut clear designs of shadow among the lichen-covered pillars. On the other three sides a high stone wall separated the house and yard from the forest. Pieto could see the sharp silhouettes of the tall pine tops against the star-strewn sky. The rain had ceased, and there was a delicious freshness in the air, and the woodland was alive with the tiny noises of the night.
A bat zigzagged before the man's eyes, and he hurried on his errand. He collected an armful of logs from a shed in the corner and hastened back to the fire. He did not forget to pay another visit to the cellar on his way.
By the time Teresa's labours were finished birds were calling to their mates, and the higher branches of the trees were flushed with the dawn. The dining-room showed ghostly as she entered it. Her husband was still before the nearly dead fire, his arms hanging inertly on either side, the finger-tips touching the floor. A broken glass lay at his feet, and the red wine had run into a little pool. The rays of the newly-risen sun struggled through the escutcheoned panes and cast a variegated sheen over all, and a candle which had outlasted its fellows shone with a pale sickly light. Teresa laid a heavy hand on the shoulder of her sleeping lord.