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"Your mistress has some near relations in Pisa, has she not?" said the doctor from Florence, appealing to the servant who waited near him. "Her father, sir, Signor Luca Lomi; and her uncle, Father Rocco," answered the man. "They were here all through the day, until my mistress fell asleep." "Do you know where to find them now?"
Fabio was now waiting in it, to hear the report of the doctors after their evening visit. Although Maddalena Lomi had not been his first love, and although he had married her under circumstances which are generally and rightly considered to afford few chances of lasting happiness in wedded life, still they had lived together through the one year of their union tranquilly, if not fondly.
Luca Lomi called Fabio to him as she went away, and Father Rocco, turning to the statuette, looked to see how the plaster was hardening on it. Seeing them thus engaged, Nanina attempted to escape from the studio without being noticed; but the priest stopped her just as she was hurrying by him. "My child," said he, in his gentle, quiet way, "are you going home?"
"Oh, if that proof which would cure him could only be found!" she thought to herself, as she stole back anxiously to the bedside when the room was empty. On getting home that day she found a letter waiting for her, and was greatly surprised to see that it was written by no less a person than the master-sculptor, Luca Lomi.
I shall show these papers to the count as soon as he is fit to peruse them, and I have no doubt that he will be ready to take my view of the matter." This assurance relieved Luca Lomi of a great weight of anxiety. He bowed and withdrew. The doctor placed the papers in the same cabinet in which he had secured the wax mask.
Two old crones seized on my ankles, murmuring lomi, lomi, and subjected them to the native process of shampooing. They had unrestrained curiosity as to the beginning and end of my journey. I said "Waimea, Hamakua," when they all chorused, "Maikai;" for a ride of forty miles was not bad for a wahine haole.
Both Bella's and Martha's eyes were luminous-moist, as the old retainer repeated the lomi and the mele to Martha, and as they talked with her in the ancient tongue and asked the immemorial questions about her health and age and great-great-grandchildren she who had lomied them as babies in the great house at Kilohana, as her ancestresses had lomied their ancestresses back through the unnumbered generations.
"Yes; a child, born little more than a week ago." "Not a boy, I hope?" "No; a girl." "I am glad of that. Those rich people always want the first-born to be an heir. They will both be disappointed. I am glad of that." "Mercy on us, Brigida, how fierce you look!" "Do I? It's likely enough. I hate Fabio d'Ascoli and Maddalena Lomi singly as man and woman, doubly as man and wife. Stop!
She was on the point of slipping away to the door with a word of farewell, when a sudden exclamation from Luca Lomi arrested her. "Plaster!" cried the master-sculptor, looking intently at that part of the hair of the statue which lay lowest on the forehead. "Plaster here!"
At the end of the large room, nearest to the street door, Luca Lomi was standing by his life-size statue of Minerva; and was issuing directions, from time to time, to some of his workmen, who were roughly chiseling the drapery of another figure.
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