SIX SUNNY MONTHS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC.
CHAPTER X.
A BREEZE FROM THE WEST.
They were rather late with their coffee the next morning, and while they were taking it the bells of Santa Pudentiana, close to them, were ringing a morto—one, two, three, and again one, two, three—with a mournful persistence.
“It is just what we need,” the Signora said. “Our danger, at this moment, is that we may be too lightly happy. Those bells mean that a nun is dead, and that there is to be a High Mass for her in half an hour or so. Shall we go?”
Marion, who had joined them, and was sitting beside Bianca, said to her: “We are not afraid of seeing death, are we?”
“But we might be better for being reminded of it,” she said.
The ladies followed the people’s pretty fashion of putting black lace veils on their heads instead of bonnets, and had the good taste, too, to exchange their gay morning house-dresses for black ones before going to the church.