Page:Romance & Reality 3.pdf/224

222 It was some months before Signor Pachetti settled into a state of passive endurance: I am not sure whether at first he did not consider it as a personal compliment. But his wife generalised too much—her suspicions extended from sixteen to sixty—and with this latter selection it was impossible to be flattered. For the last few weeks, a press of business had confined him so closely to his shop, that, as few female neighbours ventured to set foot over her threshold, Caterina's vigilance had sadly lacked employment. The past fortnight had been one of sullenness, cold black looks, short snappish words, and those ingenious contradictions which sometimes vary the halcyon calm of domestic felicity. Beatrice's appearance was quite a godsend. Nothing is more inhuman than a bad temper. The forlorn situation of the young Spaniard only struck her hostess as enabling her to be insolent with impunity. Weary, but too anxious for sleep, Beatrice gazed round the miserable little room: the walls, from which the plaster was mouldering—the cobwebs, that for years had been gathering on the rafters of the roof—the window, or rather opening, for window there was