"You have no right to call me a coward," answered Bosio, defending his manhood. "I told you that I could not do it. The man put it in such a way that I had to give him a definite answer. For your sake I would not deny the engagement altogether--"

"For my sake!" exclaimed Matilde. "Do not use such phrases to me. They mean nothing. For some wretched quibble of your miserable conscience--as you still have the a.s.sumption to call it--you will ruin us in another day."

"Yes, I still have some conscience," replied Bosio, trying to be bold under her scornful eyes. "I would not let Taquisara think that you and Gregorio had lied, and I would not lie myself--"

"You are reforming, then? You choose the moment well!"

"I have told you what pa.s.sed between Taquisara and me," said Bosio.

"That was what you wished to know. I will judge of myself whether I did right or not."

He turned from her and walked away, towards the door.

"Well?" she said, not moving, for she knew that her voice would stop him.

"Is there anything else?" he asked, turning again and standing still.

"There is much more. Come back! Sit down and talk to me like a sensible being. There is much to be said. The matter is all but settled in spite of the account which Taquisara frightened you into giving him. I like that man, he is so brave! He is not at all like you."

"If you wish me to stay longer, you must not insult me again," said Bosio, not yet seating himself, but resting his hands on the back of a chair as he stood. "You know very well that I am no more a coward, if it comes to fighting men, than others are. One need not be cowardly to dread doing such a thing as you are trying to force me to."

"It does not seem such a very terrible thing," said Matilde, her tone suddenly changing and growing thoughtful. "It really does not seem to me such a dreadful thing that you should be Veronica's husband. Of course I do not speak of the material advantages. You were always an idealist, Bosio--you do not care for those things, and I daresay that when you are married you will not even care to take her t.i.tles, nor to spend much of her money. I know well enough what pa.s.ses in your mind. Sit down. Let us talk about it. We cannot afford to quarrel, you and I, can we? I am sorry I spoke as I did--and I never meant that you were cowardly in the ordinary sense. I was angry about Taquisara. What right had he to come here, to pry into our affairs? I should think you would have resented it, too."

"I did," said Bosio, somewhat sullenly. "But I could not turn him out, nor get into a quarrel with him. It would have made a useless scandal and would have set every one talking."

"Certainly," a.s.sented Matilde. "Perhaps you did right, after all--at least, you thought you did. I am sure of that. I do not know why I was so angry at you. I am unstrung, and nervous, I suppose. Did I say very dreadful things to you, dear? I do not know what I said--"

"You called me a coward several times," replied Bosio, thinking to show a little strength by relenting slowly.

"Oh! but I did not mean it!" cried the countess. "Bosio, forgive me. I did not mean to say such things--indeed, I did not. But do you wonder that I am nervous? Say that you forgive me--"

"Of course I forgive you," answered Bosio, raising his eyebrows rather wearily. "I know that you are under a terrible strain--but you say things sometimes which are unjust and hard. I know what all this means to us both--but there must be some other way."

Matilde shook her head mournfully, as Bosio sat down beside her, already sinking back to his long-learned docility.

"There is no other way," she said. "There is certainly none, that is sure. I have thought it all over, as one thinks of everything when everything is in danger. The only other course is to throw ourselves upon Veronica's mercy--"

"Well? Why not?" asked Bosio, eagerly, as Don Teodoro's advice gained instant plausibility again. "She is kind, she is charitable, she will forgive everything and save you--"

"The shame of it, Bosio! Of confessing it all--and she may refuse.

Veronica is not all kindness and charity. She is a Serra, as I am, and though she is a mere girl, if she takes it into her head to be hard and unforgiving, there would be no power on earth that could move her. She is not so unlike me, Bosio. You may think so because she is so unlike me in looks. She has the type of her father, poor Tommaso. But we Serra are all Serra--there is not much difference. No--do not interrupt me, dear. And as for your marriage, there is much to be said for it. It is time that you were married, you know. You and I have lived our lives, and we are not what we were. I shall always be fond of you--we shall always be more than friends--but always less than what we have been. It must have come sooner or later, Bosio, and it may as well come now. You know--we cannot be always young. And as for me, if I am not already old, I soon shall be."

The woman who had held him so long knew how to tempt him, sacrificing everything in the desperate straits to which she was reduced. Though he had loved her well, and sinfully, but truly, for so many years, his love had sometimes seemed an unbearable thraldom, to escape from which he would have given his heart piecemeal, though he should lose all the happiness life held for him, for the sake of a momentary freedom.

Possibly, too, she knew that he never longed for that freedom so much as when she had just been most violent and despotic. She was prepared for the feeble dissent with which he answered her suggestion of separation.

He would be the more easily persuaded to yield and marry Veronica.

"As for your being old," he said, "it is absurd. It is I who have grown old of late. But our being friends--" he paused thoughtfully.

"A man is never too old to marry," answered Matilde. "It is only women who grow too old to be loved. You will begin your life all over again with Veronica. You and she will go away together--you can live in Rome, when you are tired of Paris. It will be better. You and I will see each other seldom at first. By and by it will be so easy for us to be good friends after we have been separated some time."

"Friends?" Bosio spoke the one word again, with a sad and dreamy intonation.

"I asked Veronica this morning," continued Matilde, not heeding him, and beginning to speak more rapidly. "You have no idea how very fond she is of you. When I spoke of the marriage, she seemed to think it the most natural thing in the world. She found arguments for it herself."

"She?"

"Yes. She said--what I have said to you--that there was no man whom she knew so well and liked so much as you, that of course she had never thought of marrying you, nor, indeed, of being married at all, but that, at the same time, she should think that you would make a very good husband. She wished to think of it--that is as much as to say that she will not even make any serious objections. You have no idea how young girls feel about marriage, Bosio. How should you? You cannot comprehend the horror a girl like Veronica feels of a stranger, of a man like Gianluca, even, whom she has met half a dozen times and talked with. It seems so dreadful to think of spending a lifetime with a man about whom she knows nothing, or next to nothing. And yet it is the custom, and most of them accept it and are happy. But the idea of marrying some one with whom she is really intimate, whom she really likes, who really understands her, places marriage in a new light for a young girl.

Without knowing it, Veronica is half in love with you. It is no wonder that she likes the thought of being your wife--apart from the fact that you are a very desirable husband."

"I cannot believe that," said Bosio.

"That you are desirable as a husband? My dear Bosio, do not pretend to be so absurdly modest! Any woman would be glad to marry you. But for me, you could have made the best match in Naples years ago--"

"Not even years ago. Much less now. But that was not what I meant. I cannot believe that Veronica is really inclined to marry me. It seems to me that she might be my daughter--"

"If you had been married at fifteen," suggested Matilde, laughing softly. "Because you feel tired and hara.s.sed to-day, you feel a hundred years old. It is no compliment to me to say so, for I am even a little older than you, I think. And you--you are young, you are handsome, you are talented, you have the manners that women love--"

"It is not many minutes since you were saying that we were both growing old--"

"No, no! I said that we could not always be young. That is very different. And that we have lived our lives--our lives so long as they can be lived together--that is what I meant. You are young! How many men marry at fifty! And you are not forty yet. You have ten years of youth before you. That is not the question. So far as that is concerned, say that you are old to-night, at dinner, and you shall see how Veronica will laugh at you! But that you and I should part, Bosio--and yet, it is far better, if you have the courage."

"Have you?" he asked sadly.

"Yes--I have, for your sake, since I see how you look at this. And you are right. I know you are, though I am only a woman, and cannot have a man's ideas about honour. For my own part--well, I am a woman, and I have loved you long. But you are the one to be thought of. You shall be free, as though I had never lived. You shall be able to say to yourself that in marrying Veronica you are not doing anything in the least dishonourable. I shall not exist for you. I shall not feel that I have the right to think of you and for you as I always have. I shall never ask you to do anything for me, lest you should feel that I were a.s.serting some claim to you, as though you were still mine. It will be hard at first. But I can do it, and I will do it, in order that your conscience may be free. You shall marry her, as though you had never known me, and hereafter I will always be the same. Only--" She fixed her eyes upon him with a look which, whether genuine or a.s.sumed, was fierce and tender--

"Only--if you are not true to her, Bosio--if you leave her and go after some other woman--then I will turn upon you!"

Bosio met her glance with a look of something like astonishment, wondering how in a few sentences she had got herself into a position to threaten him with vengeance if he were unfaithful to Veronica.

"We will not speak of that," she exclaimed before he said anything in answer or protest. "We have harder things to do than to imagine evil in the future. Since we are decided--since it is to be the end--let it be now, quickly! You shall not have it on your mind that you belong to me in any way, from now. No--you are right--you must feel free. You must feel free, besides really being free. You must feel, when you speak to Veronica to-night or to-morrow, as she expects you to speak, that all our life together is utterly past and swept away, and that I only exist henceforth as a relative--as--as your wife's aunt, Bosio!"

She laughed, half-bitterly, half-nervously, at the idea, and turning away her face she held out her hand to him.

He took it, and held it, pressing it between both his own.

"Do you mean this, Matilde?" he asked in a low voice.

"Yes, I mean it," she answered, speaking away from him with averted face.

He could not see, but she was biting her lip till it almost bled. In her own strange way she loved him with all her evil nature, and if she were breaking with him now, it was to save herself from something worse than death. It was the hardest thing she had ever done. He hesitated: there was the mean prompting of the spirit, to take her at her word and to set himself free, since she offered him freedom, caring not whether she might repent to-morrow; and there was the instinct of fidelity which in so much dishonour had remained with him through so many years.

"Besides," she said hoa.r.s.ely, "I do not love you any more. I would not keep you longer, if I could. Oh--we shall be friends! But the other--no!

Good bye, Bosio--good bye."

Something moved him, as she had not meant that anything should.

"I do not believe you," he said. "You love me still--I will not leave you!"

"No, no! I do not--but if you still care at all, save me. Say good bye, but do the rest also. You are free now. You are an honourable man again.