Luisa who was still clinging with one arm to her husband's neck, motioned to Professor Gilardoni with the other hand, entreating him to be silent.

"No, no, no!" she murmured, once more clasping her arms about Franco.

"You are doing right! You are doing right!" As Gilardoni continued to insist, she drew away from her husband, and cried, her hands extended protestingly towards their host: "But, Professor, it is I who tell him he is doing right! I, his wife, tell him so! Dear Professor, don't you understand?"

"After all, dear lady," Gilardoni burst out, "it is time you were informed----"

Franco flung his arms towards him, crying impetuously: "Professor!"

"You are doing wrong," the other replied. "You are doing wrong, very wrong!"

"What is it, Franco?" Luisa demanded in astonishment. "Is there something I do not know?"

"Only that I must go away, that I shall go away. That is all!"

Franco's exclamation, "Professor!" had awakened Maria with a start.

Seeing her mother's agitation she prepared to cry; presently she burst into violent sobbing, and wailed: "No Papa! Papa not go away! Not go away!"

Franco took her in his arms, kissing and caressing her, while she kept repeating: "My Papa! My Papa!" in a pitiful, grieved voice that made their hearts ache. Her father yearned over her, and protested that he would always stay with her; but he wept at his own deceit, wept with the emotion this new tenderness, springing up at such a moment, caused him.

Luisa was thinking of her husband's cry. Gilardoni saw she suspected a secret, and, hoping to distract her thoughts, asked her if Franco intended to start at once. Franco himself replied. Everything depended upon a letter from Turin. Perhaps it would be a week, at the latest a fortnight, before he started. Luisa was silent, and the subject was dropped. Then Franco talked of politics, of the probability that war would break out in the Spring. But again conversation soon languished.

Gilardoni and Luisa seemed to be thinking of something else, to be listening to the beat of the waves against the garden wall. Finally Ismaele returned, drank his punch, and a.s.sured them that the lake was not very rough, and that they could start homewards.

As soon as the Maironis were seated in the boat, and Maria had gone to sleep, Luisa asked her husband if there was something she did not know, and which Gilardoni must not tell.

Franco did not answer.

"Enough!" said she. Then her husband threw his arm around her neck and pressed her to him, protesting against words she had not uttered. "Oh, Luisa, Luisa!"

Luisa suffered his embrace, but did not return it, and at last, in despair, her husband promised to tell her every thing, at once. "Do you think I am curious?" she whispered, in his arms. No, no. He would tell her at once, tell her everything; he would explain why he had not spoken before. She did not wish this; she preferred that he should speak at some other time, and of his own free will.

The wind was in their favour and the light shining in the window of the loggia served Ismaele well as a guide. Franco's arm still encircled his wife's shoulders, and his gaze was fixed upon that shining point.

Neither he nor she thought of the loving and prudent hand that had lighted it. But Ismaele thought of it, and reflected that neither Veronica nor Cia were capable of such an act of genius, and blessed the engineer's kind heart.

On leaving the boat Maria woke up, and her parents seemed to have no thought save for her. When they were in bed Franco put out the light.

"It concerns my grandmother," said he in a broken and agitated voice.

"Poor boy!" Luisa murmured and took his hand affectionately. "I have never told you in order to avoid accusing my grandmother, and also because----" He paused, and then it was he who mingled with his words the most tender caresses, to which Luisa now no longer responded. "I feared your impressions, your sentiments, the ideas you might conceive----!" As his words began to express his doubts his voice grew more tender.

Luisa felt the approach, not of a dispute, but of a far more lasting disagreement. Now, she no longer wished her husband to speak, and he, noticing her increasing coldness, did not continue. She rested her forehead against his shoulder, and said, almost in spite of herself: "Tell me!"

Then Franco, his lips against her hair, related the story the Professor had told him on the night of their marriage. In repeating from memory the contents of his grandfather's letter and will, he greatly softened the injurious expressions used against his father and grandmother. In the middle of his recital Luisa, who had not expected such a revelation, raised her head from her husband's shoulder. He stopped. "Go on," said she.

When he had finished she asked if there was any proof that his grandfather's will had been suppressed. Franco promptly answered that there was not. "Then," said she, "why did you speak of the ideas I might conceive?" Her thoughts had immediately flown to the probability of his grandmother's crime, to the possibility of a prosecution. But if prosecution were not possible?

Franco did not answer, and she exclaimed, after a moment's reflection, "Ah! the copy of the will! Could that be used? Would that be valid?"

"Yes."

"And you would not use it?"

"No."

"Why not, Franco?"

"There!" Franco exclaimed. "You see? I knew you would say so! No, I will not make use of it! No, no, never!"

"But what reasons have you for not doing so?"

"Good Lord! My reasons! My reasons can be felt. You should feel them without my having to explain them."

"I do not feel them. Don't imagine I am thinking of the money. We will not touch the money. Give it to whomever you like; I feel the claims of justice. There are your grandfather's wishes to be respected; there is the crime your grandmother has committed. You who are so religious should perceive that Divine Justice has brought this doc.u.ment to light.

Would you place yourself between this woman and Divine Justice?"

"Let Divine Justice alone," Franco retorted, hotly. "What do we know of the ways of Divine Justice? There is also Divine Mercy. She is my father's mother, think of that! And have I not always despised this accursed money? What did I do when my grandmother threatened not to leave me a penny if I married you?"

Unable to speak, he drew Luisa's head to his breast.

"I despised the money for your sake," he went on in a stifled voice.

"Would you have me try to regain it now by going to law?"

"No indeed!" Luisa broke in, raising her head. "You may give the money to whomever you wish. I am talking of justice. Don't you also feel the demand of justice?"

"_Dio mio!_" said he, with a deep sigh. "It would have been better if I had not spoken to-night."

"Yes, perhaps. If you were bound never to alter your decision, it would perhaps have been wiser."

Luisa's voice expressed sadness, not anger, as she uttered these words.

"In any way, that doc.u.ment no longer exists," Franco remarked.

Luisa started. "It no longer exists?" said she anxiously, in an undertone.

"No. The Professor was to destroy it, by my orders."

A long silence followed. Very slowly Luisa withdrew her head and rested it on her own pillow. Suddenly Franco exclaimed, aloud: "A law-suit indeed! With those doc.u.ments! With those insults! To the mother of my father! And all for money!"

"Don't keep repeating that," his wife exclaimed indignantly. "Why do you keep repeating that? Don't you know very well it is not true?"

Both spoke excitedly. It was plain that during the preceding silence their thoughts had been hard at work on this point. The reproof irritated him, and he replied blindly--

"I know nothing about it!"

"Oh, Franco!" cried Luisa, much hurt. He already regretted the affront, and begged her to forgive him, accusing his hot temper, which made him say things he did not mean, and he entreated her to speak a kind word to him. "Yes, yes," Luisa answered with a sigh, but he was not satisfied, and wished her to embrace him and say, "I forgive you." The touch of the dear lips did not refresh him as usual. Some minutes pa.s.sed, and then he strained his ear to hear if his wife had fallen asleep. He heard the wind, Maria's quiet breathing, the noise of the waves, the jarring of a window, but that was all. "Have you really forgiven me?" he whispered, and he heard her soft answer: "Yes, dear." Presently she, in her turn, listened, and besides the wind, the waves, the creaking of a shutter, the even, regular breathing of the child, she heard the even, regular breathing of her husband. Then she once more sighed deeply, sighed despairingly. Oh, G.o.d! How could Franco have acted thus? What wounded her heart most sorely was the fact that he did not seem to sense the injuries which her poor mother and Uncle Piero had suffered. But she would not allow herself to dwell on this thought, at least not until she had considered his other mistake, his mistaken idea of justice. And here she felt bitterly, but not without a certain satisfaction, that he was her inferior, that he was controlled by sentiments that were the outcome of his fancy, while her own sentiment was inspired by reason. Franco had in him so much of the child. He had, even now, been able to go to sleep, while she was sure of not closing her eyes all night long. She believed she was without imagination because she did not feel it move, because in her it was less easily inflamed. She would have laughed had she been told that imagination was more powerful in her than in her husband. But indeed such was the case. Only, in order to demonstrate this, both souls must be turned upside down, for Franco's imagination was visible on the surface of his soul, and all his reason was at the bottom, while in Luisa's soul imagination was at the bottom, and reason was plainly visible on the surface. In fact, she did not sleep, but all night long she thought, with that imagination that lay at the bottom of her soul, how religion favours weak sentimentality, how incapable it is, even while preaching the thirst for justice, of forming a correct sense of justice in those intellects which are devoted to it.

The Professor also, who was subject to serious infiltrations of imagination into the ratiocinative cells of his brain, as well as into the amorous cells of his heart, having put out the light, spent the greater part of the night in front of the fireplace, working with the tongs and with his imagination, taking up, examining and then dropping embers and projects, until only one glowing coal and one last idea remained. Then he took a match, and having held it in contact with the ember, lighted the lamp once more, seized the idea, which was also hot and luminous, and carried it off to bed with him.