But in spite of the calmness with which she spoke the Signora was much agitated, and scarcely refrained from tears when she was alone. To give such a reproof was only less difficult than to suffer an affront to the church to pass unreproved; and it was with a little nervousness that she went out to meet her guest again.
He was in the drawing-room alone, evidently waiting for her, and the first glance in his face entirely reassured her, so sweet and untroubled was his expression.
“I am like a great rough elephant who has stepped on the kind lady who was feeding him with sugarplums,” he said, and offered his hand to her with a confidence in her good-will which was almost more pleasing than her confidence in his.
And so ended their first and last quarrel.
The girls, who came presently, with a little timidity, beamed when they saw the two standing by a window and watching the work going on across the street. All the space there had once been a palace-garden, but now nearly every flowery thing had disappeared, and in their place the foundations of a large building were being laid in a superbly solid way. Wide walls of stone, on which three men could walk abreast, had in some places risen a few feet above the outer level, their bases sunk ten feet, perhaps, below the deep cellar bottom, and the trenches for founding the partition-walls were being dug in the same manner. They could see, too, the beginning of the grand stone arches which were to support the floors. An Italian would have passed all this without notice; but to one accustomed to the flimsy style of American architecture the sight was refreshing. In the centre of the space the building was to occupy still remained a fountain-basin from which the water had been drawn away, exposing a circle of beautiful round arches of gray stone. Under these arches the workmen were accustomed to take refuge when a shower came up, crouching there contentedly, and
looking out at the bright drops as they fell, like swallows out of a row of nests under the barn-eaves.
“I have wondered whether there ever before was a house on this spot,” the Signora said. “If there were, a garden has bloomed over it for centuries, as, perhaps, at some future time, another garden will cover the ruins of this work of to-day. A few months ago some flowers still lingered here, but they were trampled or dug away, till at last only one red poppy was left at the edge of the cellar-wall. I watched it day after day, blazing there like a heart on fire. Every morning I looked out I feared to miss it; but there it clung among trampling feet of men and beasts, with stone-work being built almost over it, and every sort of destruction threatening, but never falling. When nearly a week had passed, I could bear it no longer. If at that time I had seen a foot set upon, or a rock crushing, the flower, I should have cried out as though I were myself being crushed. I sent Adriano out to get it for me, and pressed it carefully in the prettiest book I have—the brave little blossom! Here it is, see! The thin petals are like faded blood-stains, but the seed-vessel in the centre is firm, and precisely like a little marble urn with a mossy vine wreathing its base and running up one side. In that urn repose the dust and the hope of a long line of scarlet poppies.”
The gentleman listened indulgently to the Signora’s story, and watched her with interest as she put the relic carefully away.
And then they went down to the carriage that was waiting for them, and drove through the long street that stretches over hill and valley from the Esquiline to the Pincio, so
that one looks, as through a telescope, from the sunny brow of the former to the campanile where Maria Assunta and her maidens