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"Eh, you little fool, don't you know that it is you and your brat have set all Verona by the ears?" Vanna had never thought of the ears of Verona, and knew not how to think of them now; but she saw that her friend was in a fever of suppressed knowledge. Therefore she shawled her head and her baby in her sea-blue cloak, locked the shop-door, and followed La Testolina.
La Testolina had black eyes, a trim figure, and a way of wriggling which showed these to advantage. Fra Battista's fame and the possibility of mischief set her flashing; she led the talk and found him apt: it was not difficult to aim every word that it should go through and leave a dart in Vanna's timid breast. The girl was so artless, you could see her quiver, or feel her, at every shot.
Baldassare's own were black as old channel-posts in the Lagoon, but in tongue-work he gave as sharp as he got. Then a wicked wind blew Vanna's hair like a whip across her throat, fit to strangle her. She had to face the day. Baldassare pondered her straight young back. "When Vanna's a nun she'll have no more trouble with her hair," quoth La Testolina, matchmaker by race.
The sealed gates in the white convent wall were barred and double-locked. A scared brother cocked his eye through the grille to see who was there. "It is she," hissed La Testolina. "Dio mio, the causa causans!" cried he, and let them in through a cranny. "Follow me, mistresses, and God give good ending to this adventure," he prayed, as he slippered up the court.
The peach was hard, the morsel had many corners, went down bristling, as it were. Cola had his first stomach-ache, was hurt, was miserable, prepared to howl. At that moment La Testolina happened to look at him: she stared, she gasped, she reeled against the door-post. "Hey, Mother of Jesus!" she cried; "look at the baby!"
So, for one, whispered La Testolina, dipping a head full of confidence and mystery close to Vanna's as the girl sat working out the summer twilight. The Via Stella was narrow and gloomy. The tall houses nearly met in that close way. Looking up you saw the two jagged edges of the eaves, like great tattered wings spread towards each other.
Vanna laughed the rich quiet laugh of a girl whose affairs are in good train, and all other affairs the scratch of a flea. "Why, what have I to do with the bishop and Can Grande, La Testolina?" says she. "My master is out, and I must mind the shop. There is baby too." "By Saints Pan and Silvanus, my girl, it will be the worse for you if you come not," said La Testolina, with a tragic sniff.
On the morning of Baldassare's setting-out for the Mantuan road, La Testolina at that time much and unhealthily in Fra Battista's hire came breathless to the Via Stella. That baby was a glutton. "Hist, Vanna, hist!" La Testolina whispered; and Vanna looked up at her with a guarded smile, as who should say, "Speak softer, my dear, lest Cola should strangle in his swallow."
He passed to the sin of Fra Battista that promising young apostle handled it soberly yet gingerly, hinted extenuating circumstances the pride of life, young blood, the snares of women, Satan's favourite sitting-places, etc. drew a tear or two from his own eyes and floods from La Testolina; and then called Fra Battista to come forth that he might purge himself or be purged by the canon law.
But now and again he would look delicately up, and so sure as he did the brown eyes and the grey seemed to swim towards each other, to melt in a point, swirl in an eddy of the feelings, in which Vanna found herself drowning and found such death sweet. La Testolina still ran on, but now in a monologue. Fra Battista looked and longed, and Vanna looked again and thrilled.
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