Page:Maurice Hewlett--Little novels of Italy.djvu/117

Rh curves as his experience taught him. There went his twenty ducats. But not he could warm that image into glowing flesh, however much he sang to it and hymned. That was another's affair. So here.

Annina came on the morrow full of secrecy and other things more equivocal still in appearance. Her burden proved, however, to be a bundle of rags which, she assured Ippolita, represented all that was necessary to the perfect goatherd.

"We will do what we can here, child," said she, "in the way of staining your skin, cutting off your hair, and such like. Then you shall veil and come into the garden with me; but whereas you shall come in as the Madonna of these heathens, you shall leave, per Dio, as Silvestro, who murdered the Jew in the Via della Gatta and has to hide in the hills. Do you remember him, Ippolita?"

"Of course I do," said Ippolita. "Have I killed that Jew, Annina?"

"It is to be understood, my dear. Now come, there is everything to arrange."

There was indeed. Del Dardo would have swooned to see how Annina handled his Unapproachable. Her burnished hair was off with a clip or two of the great shears; a mixture of soot and walnut-juice hid up her roses, and transformed her ivory limbs to the similitude of a tanner's. Ippolita did not know herself. Veiled up close, she crept into the garden with her confidante, and in a bower by the canal completed her transformation. Not Daphne suffered a ruder