Perhaps she had the superstitious dislike to an empty,
and lonely church not uncommon to uneducated Italians. The fact was
at all events that, even after Ludovico had, upon more than one
occasion, brought the rushing blood into the dark face of Paolina by
surprising her at her work on the scaffolding near the vaults of the
church, old Orsola never made her appearance there. She was always
at her place on one side of the fire during the visits of the
Marchese to the quartiere in the Strada di Santa Eufemia in the
evening; but it was equally true that she almost always went to
sleep.
It is so natural and so desirable that the old should sleep under
such circumstances and on such occasions! It is so evidently for the
benefit of all the parties concerned, that the tendency may be
reckoned among the instances of beneficent adaptation with which the
whole order of Nature is filled!
It can hardly be doubted,--Ludovico could hardly be blamed for the
persuasion--that Paolina did like his visits. It may be pretty
safely assumed that those blushes, which greeted the appearance of
his head above the planks as he climbed to the scaffolding, were not
painful blushes. How early in those eight months it came to pass
that her heart leaped at the click of the huge old key in the lock,
as the sacristan admitted Ludovico by a turn of it which, as she had
well learned, heralded his coming, it might be hard to say.
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