After a while the men moved away, and then the silence became unbearable. Dino felt that he ought to be going back to Leghorn, he felt the claim of Sora Catarina's anxiety; but he could not decide to go back among all those people, who knew him and who would speak to him.

He crossed over the field again, and strolled off to the edge of the down. The moon was rising above the sea. Presently it appeared over the edge of the great gra.s.sy slope, white, spent, a visionary thing.

The luminous sky was still full of a pink glow in the west; behind this ghostly visitant it had turned to an opaque blue. The great shoulder of the hill made a gray surface of foreground.

Little by little the colour came creeping back into the gra.s.s, the moon grew metallic in texture, first golden, then of a coppery red; the down immediately beneath it telling in this half light as a ma.s.s of green washed with bronze. Here and there the deep shadow of a patch of gorse made a fantastically-shaped spot of darkness upon the turf. The quick flight of a whirring insect was distinctly audible in this still air; now and then, from very far off, sounded the cry of some belated bird.

Over moving water the moon may be an enchantress, a weaver of potent spells, but it is on the downs she dominates--the still mistress of the night, of the lonely empty country and the lonely empty sky.

Yet Dino noted nothing of the beauty around him. He was not in despair now, he was not even suffering; he was worn out, inert, it was as if the apathy of death had fallen upon his soul.

CHAPTER V.

CHOOSING.

Four days later the Marchese Gasparo was on his way to Andrea's boat-house.

There was no brighter appearance in the street that day than the countenance of this young soldier as he walked briskly along, with alert glances, his head well up, and his mind full of pleasant thoughts, which every now and then made his handsome face flush with an unconscious gleam of interest and amus.e.m.e.nt. Life was full of interesting things to Gasparo--and flattering things as well. Only this morning he had heard from the Colonel of his regiment that he had been selected to act as one of the King's body-guard on the occasion of the approaching review at Rome. He had the letter now in his pocket.

His mother, too, had been unexpectedly generous of late in the matter of supplies; at the present moment he had quite a little stock of crisp bank-notes carefully stowed away in that inner pocket. Altogether he felt himself in a brilliant and successful vein of luck.

It seemed almost a pity that so much confident good-humour should be exposed to any unwelcome shock or jar, and it was with a distinct feeling of annoyance that, as he turned out of the noisy Via Grande into the quieter expanse of the quay, his quick eyes recognised a familiar figure in the person of a short, middle-aged man coming slowly towards him.

They were too near to one another for any affectation of ignorance to seem possible. Gasparo looked sharply up and down the street, then, with a peremptory nod and a careless greeting of 'Well, Valdez!'

attempted to pa.s.s on.

Unfortunately the driver of a heavy cart laden with white blocks of Carrara marble had also selected that especial moment in which to cross into one of the narrower streets. The road was completely blocked by the unwieldy ma.s.s of stone and the four straining white oxen. The two men would be forced to wait at the same corner; Gasparo took in the awkwardness of the situation at a glance.

'I hear that you have called three times at my house for the purpose of seeing me,' he said; 'I have no objection to your calling there, not in the least. That is a matter for you to settle with my servants who answer the door, But if you have any hope of the Contessa Paula taking you back on my recommendation, why, I may as well tell you now, my good man, that it was on my recommendation that you were dismissed.'

'So I understood from the signora Contessa herself,' Pietro Valdez answered quietly; 'and that is precisely why I did myself the honour to call upon you, Marchese Balbi. It interested me to know your reasons for what you had done.'

'And pray, what leads you to suppose that I should think of giving you a reason for whatever I may think fit to do?' Gasparo demanded, with a short, scornful laugh.

Valdez shrugged his heavy shoulders; he seemed to consider that the question required no answer. 'The signora Contessa Paula had engaged me as her music master at a fixed salary for six months. I gave her perfect satisfaction. It interests me to know what arguments you used to secure my dismissal,' he repeated, with absolute self-command.

'I might, if I had chosen, have told her that you were an insolent scoundrel. As it happens, your impertinent republican theories were quite sufficient. We do not choose to a.s.sist socialists to live; neither I nor my friends.'

Valdez bowed gravely. 'That is what I wished to know. I have only to thank you, sir, for the information.' Then he smiled. 'I did not know--I was not aware that you did me the honour of interesting yourself in my political convictions.'

Gasparo's look of negligent scorn was fast pa.s.sing into an expression of quicker anger. He contemplated Valdez in silence for a moment, then he said sharply: 'You are uncommonly mistaken if you think I care a rap how you get yourself into the hands of the police. You're safe to do that sooner or later. But I do mind about your leading Dino de Rossi into mischief. You've got him turned out of one place already through your infernal rubbishing nonsense; you had better be careful how you do it again.'

Valdez laughed.

'I've known Dino de' Rossi since he was a little chap of ten years old.

He's a good fellow is Dino; and very loyal to his friends. Will the signor Marchese excuse my suggesting that it might be well if all Dino's friends were equally loyal to him?'

'And what the devil do you mean by that, sir?' said Gasparo, facing around abruptly and speaking in a fiercely challenging tone.

'This is the direct way to the house of old Drea, the fisherman, whose daughter is Dino's sweetheart. I have had the pleasure of seeing her: she is a very good, modest, innocent young girl. But there are other boatmen in Leghorn, signor Marchese; men to whom it might matter less in the end if you took to frequenting their houses every day.'

'I---- _Perdio!_ if I thought you knew what you were saying---- If I considered you anything but a meddlesome fool, I would----'

He raised his eyes, looking about him as if in search of some term strong enough to express his meaning, and it so chanced that his gaze fell upon the rubicund countenance of our old acquaintance of the Telegraph Office, the leather merchant, Sor Giovanni.

The first syllables which the young Marchese had spoken in an angry tone had reached that worthy tradesman's ears as he stood peaceably behind his own counter; but as his sense of wonder grew great with what it fed on, he had insensibly edged nearer and nearer to the scene of the encounter, until there he stood in his own doorway, both thumbs thrust into the band of his leather ap.r.o.n, his fat cheeks and gla.s.sy eyes fairly beaming with gratified curiosity.

A very little thing appealed to Gasparo's light-hearted sense of the ridiculous. He burst now into a fit of most unaffected laughter.

When he recovered himself he had lost the thread of his discourse.

'You may be sure of one thing, my man: the Countess Paula's is not the only house you have lost by _this_ morning's work,' he said dryly; and he turned on his heel and walked away whistling.

'By my blessed patron, San Giovanni! I should not like to be in _your_ shoes, friend Pietro,' observed the fat leather merchant in an awed voice, gazing up the street with profound respect at the Marchese Gasparo's receding figure. 'I should not choose to be in _your_ shoes, not I. _I_ know the young gentleman,--Livornese born and Livornese bred. It's no joke, let me tell you, to get on the wrong side of the account book with a Balbi.'

'Well, well,' said Valdez, half impatiently; 'it's only another example of the surprising contagion of folly. There were not fools enough in the world this morning apparently, and I have taken care to add one more to the number. 'Tis not a hanging matter; that's the best one can say for it. And so good-day to you, Sor Giovanni.'

'Wait a bit, wait a bit, now,' said solid Sor Giovanni soothingly. 'I just want to ask you a question or two now about Dino de Rossi. The Signor Marchese was speaking about young De Rossi, eh! eh! I have sharp ears, friend Pietro, and it seemed to me that there was talk of our Dino's falling into doubtful ways. That's bad, you know--very bad.

I had some thought of offering him a place in my business once; he is a good accountant, I am told, and would hardly expect much of a salary if one took him in when he was under a cloud, so to speak. I thought of it the day he left the Telegraph Office, but I waited--I waited to make him the offer. There's many a man has turned up his nose over the fresh loaf at breakfast-time who was ready to say his prayers over the crust at supper. It's all a question of supply and demand. One sees these things in the way of business.'

'Ay, there's small difficulty in seeing the duty one owes to oneself in the way of business,' said Valdez in his quiet way.

'E--e--eh, friend Pietro! _che volete_? Half the world is for sale, and the other half in p.a.w.n; you know the saying. But about this Dino, now. He is a friend of yours? You could answer for him, eh?'

'I answer for no man, my good Giovanni. And as for this young De Rossi; I have seen him, it is true. I knew his father; but----' He shrugged his shoulders significantly.

'See there, now! and I who counted upon your telling me more about him; for I know nothing against the young man myself, nothing but that he's a little over fond of the sound of his own voice, and for that matter he's young, he's young. He's at the age when every donkey loves his own bray. I don't know any other harm in him.'

'Harm in him? No. There's no harm in a weatherc.o.c.k if what you want to know is which way the wind is blowing,' said Valdez carelessly, and apparently quite absorbed in arranging the heavy folds of his dark circular cloak with the green lining. In reality his mind was full of a new plan for hastening their journey to Pisa. Clearly it would not do for Dino to show himself too often in his company.

Meanwhile Gasparo was hastening towards Drea's house, with just that amount of additional pleasure in the action as would naturally follow on the sense of successful opposition to somebody else's will. As for Dino,--Gasparo saw no necessity of thinking about Dino. In any case, Dino could not afford to marry, and even if he _did_,--for, in arguing a point in one's own favour, why not take both sides of the question?--even if he did marry, there were other girls in Leghorn beside this brown-eyed Italia. 'Little witch! I wonder if she guesses what she could make me do when she looks up at me with that innocent baby face of hers?' He sauntered down the steps with an expression of deepening enjoyment, a glance of expectation.

She was sitting in the old place, by the corner of the wall. Her sad face brightened a little as she looked up at the sound of footsteps and saw the young Marchese approaching her. She rose instantly, but she waited for him to speak.

'My little Italia! you look very pale. What is the matter? Has anything been troubling you?'

'I am quite well, sir, thank you. I am only tired.'

'And what has been tiring you, then? Too much pilgrimage, eh? Too many prayers in a cold church; is that not so?'

He looked at her more closely.

'You are quite sure the father has not been scolding you?'

'Oh no, sir, my father never scolds me.'

'Because I have brought something with me to restore good humour to a dozen angry fathers. See here, little one,'--it seemed at first sight a curious name to apply to that tall, slender girl with the sad eyes, but there was something childlike and unconscious about Italia's beauty which suggested the use of caressing diminutives--'see!'