"What did he want it for? There are handsomer girls than I. Who
knows what he would have done with it? He might have bewitched me
with it, or hurt my soul, or even killed me, mother says."

"Never believe such sinful things!" said the little curato very
earnestly. "Are not you ever in God's keeping, without whose will
not one hair of your head can fall? and is one poor mortal with an
image in his hand to prevail against the Lord? Besides, you might
have seen that he was fond of you; else why should he want to marry
you?"

She said nothing.

"And wherefore did you refuse him? He was an honest man, they say,
and comely; and he would have kept you and your mother far better
than you ever can yourself, for all your spinning and silk-winding."

"We are so poor!" she said passionately; "and mother has been ill so
long, we should have become a burden to him. And then I never should
have done for a signora. When his friends came to see him, he would
only have been ashamed of me."

"How can you say so? I tell you the man was good and kind; he would
even have been willing to settle in Sorrento. It will not be so easy
to find another, sent straight from heaven to be the saving of you,
as this man, indeed, appeared to be."

"I want no husband--I never shall," she said, very stubbornly, half
to herself.