CHAPTER III.
Violante was indeed a bewitching child,--a child to whom I defy Mrs.
Caudle herself (immortal Mrs.Caudle!) to have been a harsh stepmother.
Look at her now, as released from those kindly arms, she stands, still clinging with one hand to her new mamma, and holding out the other to Riccabocca, with those large dark eyes swimming in happy tears.

What a lovely smile! what an ingenuous, candid brow! She looks delicate, she evidently requires care, she wants the mother.

And rare is the woman who would not love her the better for that! Still, what an innocent, infantine bloom in those clear, smooth cheeks! and in that slight frame, what exquisite natural grace! "And this, I suppose, is your nurse, darling ?" said Mrs.Riccabocca, observing a dark, foreign-looking woman, dressed very strangely, without cap or bonnet, but a great silver arrow stuck in her hair, and a filigree chain or necklace resting upon her kerchief.
"Ah, good Annetta," said Violante, in Italian.

"Papa, she says she is to go back; but she is not to go back, is she ?" Riccabocca, who had scarcely before noticed the woman, started at that question, exchanged a rapid glance with Jackeymo, and then, muttering some inaudible excuse, approached the nurse, and, beckoning her to follow him, went away into the grounds.

He did not return for more than an hour, nor did the woman then accompany him home.