Even had their characters been more alike, their disparity of age would have rendered such sympathy impossible.

What but youth can echo back the soul of youth--all the music of its wild vanities and romantic follies?
The good nurse did not sympathize with the sentiments of her young lady, but she sympathised with the deep earnestness with which they were expressed.

She thought it wondrous silly, but wondrous moving; she wiped her eyes with the corner of her veil, and hoped in her secret heart that her young charge would soon get a real husband to put such unsubstantial fantasies out of her head.

There was a short pause in their conversation, when, just where two streets crossed one another, there was heard a loud noise of laughing voices and trampling feet.
Torches were seen on high affronting the pale light of the moon; and, at a very short distance from the two females, in the cross street, advanced a company of seven or eight men, bearing, as seen by the red light of the torches, the formidable badge of the Orsini.
Amidst the other disorders of the time, it was no unfrequent custom for the younger or more dissolute of the nobles, in small and armed companies, to parade the streets at night, seeking occasion for a licentious gallantry among the cowering citizens, or a skirmish at arms with some rival stragglers of their own order.

Such a band had Irene and her companion now chanced to encounter.
"Holy mother!" cried Benedetta, turning pale, and half running, "what curse has befallen us?
How could we have been so foolish as to tarry so late at the lady Nina's! Run, Signora,--run, or we shall fall into their hands!" But the advice of Benedetta came too late,--the fluttering garments of the women had been already descried: in a moment more they were surrounded by the marauders.