that love, I will be worthy of yours. I will make a last attempt to
give back to you the man you have loved so long and will love forever.
Till success or defeat is certain, accept without any shame the modest
ease I can give you both. We will go to-morrow and choose a place
where he may live.

"Have you such regard for me as will allow you to make me the partner
in your guardianship?"

Marianna, surprised at such magnanimity, held out her hand to the
Count, who went away, trying to evade the civilities of Giardini and
his wife.



On the following day Giardini took the Count up to the room where the
Gambaras lodged. Though Marianna fully knew her lover's noble soul,
--for there are natures which quickly enter into each other's spirit,
--Marianna was too good a housewife not to betray her annoyance at
receiving such a fine gentleman in so humble a room. Everything was
exquisitely clean. She had spent the morning in dusting her motley
furniture, the handiwork of Signor Giardini, who had put it together,
at odd moments of leisure, out of the fragments of the instruments
rejected by Gambara.

Andrea had never seen anything quite so crazy. To keep a decent
countenance he turned away from a grotesque bed, contrived by the
ingenious cook in the case of an old harpsichord, and looked at
Marianna's narrow couch, of which the single mattress was covered with
a white muslin counterpane, a circumstance that gave rise in his mind