Nina, surprised, but still pitying her sorrow and respecting her age, followed her steps across the pages' ante-room and the reception-chamber, even to the foot of the stairs,--a condescension the haughtiest princess of Rome could not have won from her; and returning, saddened and thoughtful, she took the boy's hand, and affectionately kissed his forehead.
"Poor boy!" she said, "it seems as if Providence had made me select thee yesterday from the crowd, and thus conducted thee to thy proper refuge.
For to whom should come the friendless and the orphans of Rome, but to the palace of Rome's first Magistrate ?" Turning then to her attendants, she gave them instructions as to the personal comforts of her new charge, which evinced that if power had ministered to her vanity, it had not steeled her heart.

Angelo Villani lived to repay her well! She retained the boy in her presence, and conversing with him familiarly, she was more and more pleased with his bold spirit and frank manner.

Their conversation was however interrupted, as the day advanced, by the arrival of several ladies of the Roman nobility.

And then it was that Nina's virtues receded into shade, and her faults appeared.

She could not resist the woman's triumph over those arrogant signoras who now cringed in homage where they had once slighted with disdain.