Apparently some of it had crept into Guiseppina's heart also, for she refrained from flying out when the long-delayed "minestra" turned out to be smoked, and she even went so far as to give Saint Antonio a chaste kiss as she restored him to the crooked nail to which he had hung for so long a time.
Cesare Garelli's visits became more and more frequent in Via Santa Teresa. Then followed excursions to Rivoli, to Superza, to Moncalieri. Nice little dinners, and evenings spent at the Caffe San Carlo or under the horse-chestnuts in the Valentino garden, succeeded rapidly. La Signora Pace's life savoured of the seventh heaven, and Guiseppina's temper grew mellow as the peaches which her admirer was for ever sending her.
That phase passed away, and then one fine day Cesare Garelli burst forth in all the glory and radiance of a declared and accepted lover.
In less than three months from the date of Saint Antonio's flight through the window into the hot, dusty street, Guiseppina voluntarily—oh, how voluntarily!—renounced the name of Pace for ever and took that of Garelli.
If you want to know if Saint or Satan made his match for him, you had better ask Cesare Garelli himself. I cannot tell you.
A. Beresford.
IN A BERNESE VALLEY.
I met her by this mountain stream
At twilight's fall long years gone by,
While, rosy with day's afterbeam,
Yon snow-peaks glowed against the sky;