When this was done, and a silent, self-rebuking prayer murmured over, the good woman descended the stairs with alacrity, and summoning up her best smiles, emerged on the terrace.
She was repaid; for scarcely had she come into the open air, when two little arms were thrown around her, and the sweetest voice that ever came from a child's lips sighed out in broken English, "Good mamma, love me a little." "Love you?
with my whole heart!" cried the stepmother, with all a mother's honest passion.

And she clasped the child to her breast.
"God bless you, my wife!" said Riccabocca, in a husky tone.
"Please take this too," added Jackeymo, in Italian, as well as his sobs would let him, and he broke off a great bough full of blossoms from his favourite orange-tree, and thrust it into his mistress's hand.

She had not the slightest notion what he meant by it!.