When night fell over the half-drowned city it seemed to Giannella that ten years of suspense and misery had been compressed into a single day. The few moments of wild happiness which had illuminated her sky during Rinaldo's visit had only made the creeping hours afterwards the more unbearable. As the weight of anxiety increased and no news came of either Rinaldo or Bianchi, Mariuccia's temper became almost savage; and Giannella, her hot Scandinavian blood roused at last, suddenly turned on her and told her that instead of cursing the flood, the city, and all connected with it she ought to be down on her knees praying for those who were in danger and asking pardon for her hard-heartedness in sending the bravest and kindest of men to look for a selfish old fellow who could be trusted to take the very best care of himself.
Mariuccia stopped short in her stride from window to window and stared at the girl in amazement. Giannella's eyes were blazing, her cheeks scarlet, her very hair, usually so goldenly smooth, was flying round her forehead in wild disorder. Her hands were clenched, and she brought her heel down on the bricks with a stamp which shook the rickety old floor.
"You have killed him, I know you have," she cried, all the torrent of her pent-up wretchedness finding voice in the cry. "You old people are all alike, only caring for dried-up old creatures like yourselves. We—we, the young ones, who can think of something besides musty books and dirty old statues and scraped pennies—we who can love, and suffer for others, we are nothing. We may break our hearts and cry our eyes out, and consume with anguish, and nobody cares. 'Gioventú'—youth—you say, and shrug your shoulders, and forget all about it. Where is Rinaldo, my fidanzato, I should like to know? Oh, you need not look so shocked—he is my betrothed, and we will be married whether you or the padrone or fifty thousand other cruel old people want us to or not. Madonna mia, who is that?"
Across the torrent of her anger a long knocking had broken, and the cracked bell in the passage was jangling on its wires. Both the women changed color. It was the first sound that had come to them from the outer world since the morning, and it meant tidings. Good? Bad? Their hearts stood still. Mariuccia, the hardy old peasant, gave out the most completely, sinking down on a chair with both hands on her knees and the sweat breaking out on her brow. Giannella stood rigid by the table, staring towards the door. Then came a second knock, loud and sharp. She sprang to life and flew to answer it. As she tore at the chain and bolts, a word came through, the sweetest she had ever heard: "Giannella, is it you?"
Then the door was open, there was a stifled cry, and Giannella's head was buried on her lover's shoulder, his arms held her to his heart, his kisses were on her hair—Rinaldo had come back.
How they rejoiced over him! Mariuccia laid violent hands on the padrone's stores and cooked him a supper which he never forgot. He told them, in carefully mitigated form, of the poor Professor's adventure, dwelling much on the honor and comfort he was now enjoying and as little as possible on the painful incarceration which had preceded it. Mariuccia flushed with pride and delight when she learned that her master was the guest of the revered Cardinal Cestaldini, and Giannella listened with glowing eyes to the account of the rescue, telling herself over and over again that her Rinaldo was the most valiant of heroes for so cleverly and bravely going to the padrone's assistance. If Rinaldo's part in the exploit lost nothing in the telling it was only because the young man was too triumphantly happy to deprecate the applause which Giannella lavished upon him. When at last Mariuccia ordered him to bed in Bianchi's room—for she would not hear of his attempting to return to his own lodging that night—he fell asleep in a whirl of excitement, warmed, comforted, assured of the future, and indescribably happy to feel that his beautiful, loving Giannella was under the same roof with him, dreaming of him, somewhere on the other side of the dingy whitewashed wall.
He awoke the next morning dazed and puzzled at his surroundings and rather stiff and sore from the exposure and fatigues of the day before; but he had scarcely opened his eyes when Mariuccia entered with a cup of steaming coffee, and his clothes, already carefully dried and pressed, folded over her arm. It was so long since he had had a woman to take care of him that his heart went out to her, and hers was always ready to mother another child. So he told her that she was an angel, and she said he was a good boy—and their compact for life was sealed.
When he came out into the kitchen a little later Giannella was giving the last touches to a truly Roman summer breakfast, delicate wafers of smoked ham on one plate, a pile of fresh figs, pale emerald globes, each carrying its dewdrop of honey at the tip, on another. An enterprising "fruttarolo" had wheeled his handcart up the Via Santafede at sunrise and the string and basket had done the rest. A few fresh carnations, pulled from the cherished window plants, stood in a glass with sprigs of lavender, and the repentant sunbeams played on a straw-bound flask of red wine and a carafe of sparkling Trevi water. The windows were open, the sky was blue; across the way Fra Tommaso's flowers were lifting their heads again in a fringe of white and red, and the pigeons were circling and calling to each other. The setting of the picture was all that was gay and sweet, but the picture itself was so enchanting that Rinaldo saw little else just then. Some rarer gold seemed to have been shed on Giannella's hair this morning, there was a new tenderness in her gray eyes, and her heart was so full of happiness that she smiled unconsciously, and at any chance word elusive dimples of laughter showed themselves at the corners of her pretty mouth. The brightness of the day and the ease at her heart had made her unwilling to put on her old dark dress. She had found, among a few things of her mother's which Mariuccia had kept for her, a faded muslin, white sprigged with pink, and this she had shaken out and put on, pinning a flower where the open neck sank away from her fair throat, and a ribbon round the long old-fashioned waist. Mariuccia understood, and nodded approvingly when Giannella came out of her little room looking like a rose in bloom; and Rinaldo, when he joined them, understood too, and took her hands in his and whispered, "Good-morning, sposina mia."
The storm was over and the sun had begun to shine on Rome again, and on Giannella's life at last; and though happiness was such a new thing to her, she knew it for what it was and took it to her heart in all simplicity, in perfect trust that it would never fail her again.
When Rinaldo was lighting his first cigarette Mariuccia announced that, come what might, she was going to see for herself how the padrone was getting on. She was sure he must need her after all he had gone through—and he only just getting over that dreadful cold, poverino—and of course there was nobody in the Cardinal's household who could replace her at his bedside. What good were a lot of men to a sick person, she would like to know?