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                          A LADY OF ROME

                          A LADY OF ROME

                                BY

                        F. MARION CRAWFORD

          AUTHOR OF “SARACINESCA,” “FAIR MARGARET,” ETC.

                             New York
                       THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
                   LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
                               1906

                       _All rights reserved_

                         COPYRIGHT, 1906,
                     BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

         Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1906.

                           Norwood Press
             J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
                      Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

                             CONTENTS

                              PART I

                                              PAGE

  MARIA                                          1

    CHAPTER I                                    3

    CHAPTER II                                  24

    CHAPTER III                                 47

    CHAPTER IV                                  73

    CHAPTER V                                   86

    CHAPTER VI                                  98

    CHAPTER VII                                114

    CHAPTER VIII                               132

    CHAPTER IX                                 140

    CHAPTER X                                  148

    CHAPTER XI                                 162

    CHAPTER XII                                181

                              PART II

  THE COUNTESS OF MONTALTO                     197

    CHAPTER XIII                               199

    CHAPTER XIV                                221

    CHAPTER XV                                 228

    CHAPTER XVI                                242

    CHAPTER XVII                               255

    CHAPTER XVIII                              267

    CHAPTER XIX                                289

    CHAPTER XX                                 307

    CHAPTER XXI                                320

    CHAPTER XXII                               328

    CHAPTER XXIII                              335

    CHAPTER XXIV                               353

    CHAPTER XXV                                374

PART I

MARIA

CHAPTER I

Maria Montalto was dressed as a Neapolitan Acquaiola and kept the
lemonade stall at the Kermess in Villa Borghese. The villa has
lately changed its official name, and not for the first time in
its history, but it will take as long to accustom Romans to speak
of it as Villa Umberto as it once did before they could give up
calling it Villa Cenci. For the modern Romans are conservative
people, who look with contempt or indifference on the changes of
nomenclature which are imposed from time to time by their municipal
representatives.

The lady was selling iced lemonade, syrup of almonds, and tamarind
to the smart and the vulgar, the just and the unjust alike; and
her dress consisted of a crimson silk skirt embroidered with gold
lace, a close-fitting low bodice that matched it more or less and
confined the fine linen she wore, which was a little open at the
throat and was picked up with red ribband at the elbows, besides
being embroidered in the old-fashioned Neapolitan way. She had
a handsome string of pink corals round her neck, Sicilian gold
earrings hung at her ears, and a crimson silk handkerchief was tied
over her dark hair with a knot behind her head.

She was very good-looking, and every one said the costume was
becoming to her; and as she was not at all vain, she enjoyed her
little success of prettiness very much. After all, she was barely
seven-and-twenty and had a right to look five years younger in a
fancy dress. She was not really a widow, though many of her friends
had fallen into the habit of treating her as if she were. It was
seven years since Montalto had left her and had gone to live with
his mother in Spain.

They had only lived together two years when he had gone away, and
observant people said that Maria had not grown a day older since,
whereas they had noticed a very great change in her appearance soon
after she had been married. It was quite absurd that at twenty she
should have had a little patch of grey by her left temple just
where the dark hair waved naturally. At that rate we should all be
old at thirty.

The observant ones had noticed another odd thing about Maria
Montalto. Her girl friends remembered especially a certain fearless
look in her eyes, which were not black, though they were almost
too dark to be called brown, and used to be most wonderfully full
of warm light in her girlhood. But she had not been married many
months, perhaps not many weeks, when a great change had come into
them, and instead of fearlessness her friends had seen the very
opposite in them, a look of continual terror, a haunted look,
the look of a woman who lives in perpetual dread of a terrible
catastrophe. It had been there before her boy was born, and it was
there afterwards; later she had been ill for some time, after which
Montalto had gone away, and since that day her eyes had changed
again.

There was no terror in them now, but there was the perpetual
remembrance of something that had hurt very much. I once knew a man
who had been tortured by savages for twenty-four hours, and his
eyes had that same expression ever afterwards. In the Middle Ages,
when torture was the common instrument of the law, many persons
must have gone about with that memory of suffering in their eyes,
plain for every one to see. Maria looked as if she had undergone
bodily torture, which she remembered, but no longer feared.

After all, her trouble had left no lines in her young features, nor
anything but that singular expression of her eyes and that tiny
patch of white in her hair. Her face was rather pale, but with that
delicious warm pallor which often goes with perfect health in dark
people of the more refined type, and the crimson kerchief certainly
set it off very well, as the corals did, too, and the queer little
Sicilian earrings.

The booth was gaily decorated with fresh oranges and lemons still
hanging on their branches with fresh green leaves, and with many
little coloured flags; the small swinging ‘trumone’ in which the
water was iced hung in a yoke of polished brass, and the bright
glasses and the bottles of syrup stood near Maria’s hand on the
shining metal counter.

It was a very delicately made hand, but it did not look weak, and
it moved quickly and deftly among the glasses without any useless
clatter or unnecessary spilling and splashing of water. Hands, like
faces, have expressions, and the difference is that the expression
of the hand changes but little in many years. No artist could have
glanced at Maria’s without feeling that it had a sad look about it,
a something regretful and tender which would have made any manly
man wish to take it in his and comfort it.

The people who came to the booth gave silver for a glass of
lemonade, and some gave gold, and many of them told Maria plainly
that she was the prettiest sight in all the great fair. Most of
those who came had never seen her before in their lives and had no
idea who she was, though her name was one of those great ones that
every Roman knows.

A handsome young bricklayer who had paid a franc for a glass of
syrup of almonds, and who had boldly told Maria that she was the
beauty of the day, asked a policeman her name.

‘The Contessa di Montalto.’

The young man looked pleased, for he had secretly hoped to hear
that she was nothing less than a Savelli or a Frangipane; not at
all for the sake of boasting that he had received his glass from
such very superior hands, but only for the honour of Rome. Yet
though the name was familiar to him because he knew where the
palace was, he had imagined that the family had died out.

‘Which is this Montalto?’ he asked.

The policeman could not answer the question, and his official face
was like a stone mask. But the bricklayer had a friend who was
engaged to marry a sempstress who worked for a smart dressmaker,
and therefore knew all about society; and in the course of time
he found the two walking about, and offered to pay for lemonade
if they would come to the booth with him. They were not thirsty,
and thanked him politely, so he asked the young woman who this
Contessa di Montalto might be. She threw up her eyes with an air of
compassion.

‘Ah, poor lady!’ she cried. ‘That is a long story, for she has
been alone these seven years since her husband left her. He was a
barbarian, a man without heart, to leave her! Was it her fault if
she had loved some one else before she was married to him?’

‘Adelina is a socialist,’ observed the young woman’s betrothed,
with a laugh. ‘She believes in free love! It is all very well now,
my heart,’ he added, looking at her with adoring eyes, ‘but after
we have been to the Capitol you shall be a conservative.’

‘Oh, indeed? I suppose you will beat me if I look at your friend
here?’ She pretended to be angry.

‘No. I am not a barbarian like the Conte di Montalto. But I will
cut off your little head with a handsaw.’

He was a carpenter. There were Romans of all sorts in the Villa,
the smart and the vulgar, the rich and the poor, and the rich man
who felt poor because he had lost a few thousands at cards, and
the poor man who felt rich because he had won twenty francs at
the public lottery. The high and mighty were there, buzzing about
royalties on foot, and there were the lowly and meek, eating cheap
cakes under the stone pines and looking on from a distance. There
were also some of the low who were not meek at all, but excessively
cheeky because they had been told that all men are equal, and
had paid their money at the gate in order to prove the fact by
jostling their betters and staring insolently at modest girls whose
fathers chanced to be gentlemen. These youngsters could be easily
distinguished by their small pot hats stuck on one side, their red
ties, and their unhealthy faces.

At some distance from Maria Montalto’s booth there was another,
where a number of Roman ladies chanced to have met just then and
were discussing their friends. Most of them had a genuinely good
word for Maria.

‘I have not seen her in colours since her boy was born,’ said the
elderly Princess Campodonico. ‘She is positively adorable!’

‘What is her story, mother?’ asked the Princess’s daughter, a slim
and rather prim damsel of seventeen.

‘Her story, my dear?’ inquired the lady with a sort of stony stare.
‘What in the world can you mean?’ She turned to a friend as stout,
as high-born, and as cool as herself. ‘I hear you have ordered a
faster motor car,’ she said.

The slim girl was used to her mother’s danger signals, and she
turned where she stood and looked wistfully and curiously at Maria
di Montalto, who was some twenty yards away.

‘As if I were not old enough to hear anything!’ the young lady was
saying to herself.

Then she was aware that the two elder women were talking in an
undertone, and not at all about motor cars.

‘He is in Rome,’ she heard her mother say. ‘Gianforte saw him
yesterday.’ Gianforte was the Princess’s husband.

‘Do you mean to say he has the courage to----’ began the other.

‘Or the insolence,’ suggested the first.

Then both saw that the girl was listening, and they at once
talked of other things. There is an age at which almost every
half-grown-up girl is figuratively always at an imaginary keyhole
ready to surprise a long-suspected secret, though often innocently
unconscious of her own alert curiosity. This seems to have been the
attitude of Eve herself when she met the Serpent, and though we
are told that Adam was much distressed at the consequences of the
interview, there is no mention of any regret or penitence on the
part of his more enterprising mate.

So the slim and prim Angelica Campodonico, aged barely seventeen,
wondered what Maria Montalto’s story might be, and just then she
felt the strongest possible desire to go over to the lemonade booth
to tell the pretty Countess confidentially that ‘he’ was in Rome,
whoever ‘he’ was, and to see how the lady would behave. Would she
think that his coming showed ‘courage’ or ‘insolence’? It was
all intensely interesting, and the girl would have been bitterly
disappointed if she could have known that within twenty minutes
of her going away ‘he’ would actually be present and would have
the insolence--or the courage!--to go directly to the Countess of
Montalto’s booth and speak to her under the very eyes of society.
Unhappily for the satisfaction of Angelica’s curiosity her mother
took her away, and it was a long time before she learned the truth
about Maria.

The Countess was not alone in her booth; indeed, she could not have
done the manual work without a good deal of help, for at times
there had been a dozen people standing before her little counter,
all impatient and thirsty, and all ready to pay an exorbitant
price for even a glass of water, in the name of charity. Therefore
she not only had one of her own servants at work, out of sight
in the little tent behind her, but several men who were more or
less friends of hers had succeeded each other as her assistants
during the long afternoon. They belonged to the younger generation
of Romans, a set of young men whom their parents certainly never
dreamt that they were rearing and whom their grandfathers and
grandmothers count with the sons of Belial, largely because they
love their country better than the decrepit and forlorn traditions
of other days. Forty years ago it would not have occurred to a
Roman gentleman to call himself an Italian, but to-day most of his
children call themselves Italians first and Romans afterwards, and
to these younger ones Italy is a great reality. It is true that
Romans have not lost their dislike of the inhabitants of almost all
other Italian cities, whether of the south or the north. The Roman
dislikes the Neapolitan, the Piedmontese and the Bolognese with
small difference of degree, and very much as they and the rest all
dislike each other. Italy has its sects, like Christianity, which
mostly live on bad terms with each other when forcibly brought
together in peaceable private life--like Presbyterians, Methodists,
Anglicans, and Baptists, not to mention Roman Catholics. But as it
is to be hoped that all Christians would unite against an inroad of
heathens, so it is quite certain that all Italians would now stand
loyally together for their country against any enemy that should
try to dismember it. No one who can recall the old time before the
unification can help seeing what has been built up. It is a good
thing, it is a monument in the history of a race; as it grows, the
petty landmarks of past politics disappear in the distance, to be
forgotten, or at least forgiven, and the mountain of what Italy has
accomplished stands out boldly in the political geography of modern
Europe.

Moreover, those who are too young to have helped in the work are
nevertheless proud of what has been done; and this is itself a form
of patriotism that brings with it the honest and good hope of doing
something in the near future not unworthy of what was well done in
the recent past.

The young men who helped Maria Montalto to mix lemonade and almond
syrup for her stall were of this generation, all between twenty
and thirty years old, and mostly of those who follow the line of
least resistance from the start of life to the finish. They are
all easily amused, because in their hearts they wish to be amused,
and for the same reason they are easily bored when there is no
amusement at all in the air. They are not bad fellows, they are
often good sportsmen, and they are generally not at all vicious.
They are not particularly good, it is true, but then they are very
far from bad. They have less time for flirting and general mischief
than their fathers had, because it now seems to be necessary to
spend many hours of each day in a high-speed motor car, which is
not conducive to the growth and blooming of the passion flower. It
does not promote the development of the intelligence either, but
that is a secondary consideration with people who need never know
that they have minds. Morally, motoring is probably a good rather
than an evil. People who live in constant danger of their lives are
usually much more honest and fearless than those who dawdle through
an existence of uneventful safety. The soldier in time of peace
was the butt and laughing-stock of the ancients in the comedies
of Plautus and Terence, and of the Greeks, whom those playwrights
copied or adapted, but no such contemptuous use has ever been made
of the sailor, whose life is in danger half a dozen times in every
year.

Oderisio Boccapaduli was squeezing a lemon into a glass for Maria
when he saw her hand shake as if it had been struck, and the
spoon which she was going to use for putting the powdered sugar
into the glass fell from her fingers upon the metal counter with
a sharp clatter. Oderisio glanced sideways at her face without
interrupting the squeezing of the lemon, and he saw that the
characteristic warmth had disappeared all at once from her natural
pallor and that her white cheeks looked as cold as if she were in
an ague. She was looking down when she took up the spoon again and
drew the polished brass sugar-can nearer to her. The young man
was quite sure that something had happened to disturb her, and he
could only suppose that she felt suddenly tired and ill, or else
that some one had appeared in sight not far from the booth, whose
presence was unexpected and disagreeable enough to give her a bad
shock.

But he knew much more about her than Angelica Campodonico, for he
was six-and-twenty, and had been seventeen himself when Maria had
married, and nineteen when Montalto had left her; and since he had
finished his military service and had been at large in society he
had learned pretty much all that could be known about people who
belonged to his set. He therefore scrutinised the faces in the near
distance, and presently he saw one which he had not seen in Rome
for several years; once more he glanced sideways at Maria, and her
hand was unsteady as she gave the full glass to a respectable old
gentleman who was waiting for it in an attitude of admiration.

The face was that of a man who was Oderisio’s cousin in a not very
distant degree, and who bore the honourable and historical name of
Baldassare del Castiglione. He was looking straight at Maria and
was coming slowly towards her.

Then Oderisio, who was an honest gentleman, saw that something
unpleasant was going to happen, and on pretence of bringing fresh
glasses from behind the booth, he slipped under the curtain into
the tent; but instead of getting the tumblers he quietly took his
hat and stick and went away, telling the servant that he would send
his brother or a friend to help the Contessa, as he was obliged to
go home. Moreover, he carefully avoided passing in front of the
booth lest Maria should think that he was watching her, and he went
off to another part of the Kermess.

Meanwhile the old gentleman drank his lemonade, and it chanced that
no other customer was at the counter when Castiglione reached it
and took off his hat. He was a square-shouldered man of thirty or
a little less, with short and thick brown hair and a rather heavy
moustache, such as is often affected by cavalrymen; his healthy,
sunburnt face made his rather hard eyes look very blue, and the
well-shaped aquiline nose of the martial type, with the solid
square jaw, conveyed the impression that he was a born fighting
man, easily roused and soon dangerous, somewhat lawless and violent
by nature, but brave and straightforward.

He took off his hat and bowed as he came up, neither stiffly nor at
all familiarly, but precisely as he would have bowed to ninety-nine
women out of a hundred whom he knew. He did not put out his hand,
and he did not speak for a moment, apparently meaning to give Maria
a chance to say something.

Her hand was no longer shaking now, but the warmth had not come
back to her face, and when she slowly looked up and met the man’s
eyes her own were coldly resentful. She did not speak; she merely
met his look steadily, by an effort of will which he was far from
understanding at the moment.

‘I have left Milan on a fortnight’s leave,’ he said quietly. ‘Will
you let me come and see you?’

‘Certainly not.’

The decided answer was given in a voice as calm as his own, but
the tone would have convinced most men that there was to be no
appeal from the direct refusal. Castiglione’s features hardened and
his jaw seemed more square than ever. There was a look of brutal
strength in his face at that moment, though his voice was gentle
when he spoke.

‘Have you never thought of forgiving me?’ he asked.

‘I have prayed that I might.’ Maria fixed her eyes fearlessly on
his.

‘But your prayer has not been answered, I suppose,’ he said, with
some contempt, and with an evident lack of belief in the efficacy
of prayer in general.

‘No,’ Maria answered. ‘God has not yet granted what I ask every
day.’

Castiglione looked at her still. It was strange that the face of
such a man should be capable of many shades of expression, so
subtle that only a portrait painter of genius could have defined
them and reproduced any one of them, while most men would hardly
have noticed them all. Yet every woman with whom he talked felt
that his face often said more than his words.

The keen blue light in his eyes softened at Maria’s simple answer
to his contemptuous speech; the strength was in his face still, but
without the brutality. She saw, and remembered why she had loved
him too well, and when he spoke she turned away lest she should
remember more.

‘I beg your pardon for what I said. I am sorry. Please forgive me.’

‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘I can forgive that, for you did not mean it.’

She looked behind her, for she had been expecting Oderisio to come
back at any moment. The booth was so small that she could lift the
curtain without leaving the counter. She looked under it and saw
that Oderisio was gone, and she guessed that he knew something and
had seen Castiglione coming; instead of being grateful to him for
leaving her, she at first resented his going away and bit her lip;
for she was a very womanly woman, and every woman is annoyed that
any man should know any secret of hers which she has not told him.
But later, when she was thinking over what had happened, she felt
that Oderisio had done what a gentleman should, according to his
lights; for he must have known that the two had not seen each other
for years, and that such a meeting could hardly take place without
some show of feeling on one side or the other.

Castiglione thanked her gently for her answer, and was going to say
more, but she interrupted him, and suddenly began to busy herself
with a lemon and a glass.

‘I am making you a lemonade,’ she said in a low voice. ‘There are
some people we know coming to the booth. Do not turn round to look.’

The new-comers were two rather young women and a man who was not
the husband of either. Castiglione knew them too, as Maria was well
aware, and she would not have let them find him there, talking to
her, without so much as a lemonade for an excuse.

But the necessity for the small artifice, the low tone in which she
had been obliged to speak, and, above all, the close connection of
that necessity with the past, had slightly changed the situation.

‘I shall go to your house to-morrow at three o’clock,’ said
Castiglione in a tone which the approaching party could not
possibly have heard. ‘Not much sugar, if you please,’ he added very
audibly and without pausing a second.

Again she bit her lip a little, and she drew a short breath which
he heard, and she shook her head, but it was impossible to answer
him otherwise, for the three new-comers were close to the booth,
and a moment later they were greeting her and Castiglione. The man
was one of the now numerous Saracinesca tribe, a married son of
the gigantic old Marchese di San Giacinto, who was still alive,
and who had married Flavia Montevarchi nearly forty years earlier.
His companions were the Marchesa di Parenzo, the Roman wife of
a gentleman of Bologna, and Donna Teresa Crescenzi, whose wild
husband had been killed in a motor-car accident at last, and who
was supposed to be looking for another. The Marchesa di Parenzo
was Maria Montalto’s most faithful friend, and Donna Teresa was one
of the most accomplished gossips in Rome.

An accomplished gossip is one who tells stories which sound as if
they might be true. This kind is very dangerous.

Neither of these two ladies knew all the truth about Maria and
Castiglione; the difference between them was that the Marchesa
never talked of the story, whereas Donna Teresa had concocted a
tale which she repeated at intervals in the course of years, with
constantly increasing precision of detail and dramatic sequence,
till society had almost accepted it as an accurate account of what
had taken place.

In actual fact there was not a word of truth in it, except that
Maria and Castiglione had loved each other dearly. Donna Teresa was
a tolerably good-natured woman on the whole, however, and her story
gave Maria credit for the most splendid self-sacrifice and the most
saintly life; it represented Baldassare del Castiglione as a hero
worthy of his knightly ancestor and a perfect Galahad, so far as
Maria was concerned; and it threw every particle of the blame on
Montalto, who had left his wife to go and live in Spain, and was
therefore permanently enrolled amongst those absent friends whose
healths are drunk at family gatherings with a secret prayer that
they may remain absent for ever, and whose characters may be torn
to rags and tatters with perfect safety.

Donna Teresa had reached the point of believing her own story.
She said she had been present at almost every crisis in the two
years’ drama which had so completely separated three people that
they apparently meant never to set eyes on one another again; she
had consoled the lovers, she had inspired them with courage to
sacrifice themselves, and had metaphorically dried their scalding
tears; and she had spoken her mind to that monster of brutality,
the Count of Montalto. In fact, she had contributed to his
determination to go away for ever and to leave his poor young wife
to bring up his son in peace.

Maria knew Donna Teresa’s story well, for her friend Giuliana
Parenzo had told it to her; and as Maria was in no way called upon
to make a public denial of it, she simply said nothing and was
grateful to the gossip for treating her so kindly. Giuliana was not
curious, and if she rightly guessed some part of the secret which
her friend had never told her, she would not for worlds have asked
her a question.

The three new-comers were all in the best possible humour, and the
ladies wore perfectly new spring frocks of the very becoming model
that was in fashion that spring; the one was of the palest grey and
the other of the softest dove-colour. Giuliana was a dark woman
with a quiet face; Teresa Crescenzi was very fair, fairer, perhaps,
than all probability, and when she was excited she screamed.

‘Dear Maria!’ she cried in a high key, after the first words of
greeting. ‘You are quite adorable in that costume! The Princess
Campodonico was saying just now that it is a real pleasure to see
you in colours at last. Maria has worn nothing but black and grey
for seven years,’ added the lively lady, turning to Castiglione.

‘We all are dying of thirst,’ said Giuliana, seeing the look of
annoyance in her friend’s face. ‘We all want lemonade, and we all
want it at once. Won’t you let me come inside and help you?’

‘No, dear,’ answered Maria with a grateful look. ‘I really do not
need help, and you do not look at all like a Neapolitan Acquaiola
in that frock! Besides, Oderisio Boccapaduli is supposed to be my
adjutant, but he has gone off to smoke a cigarette.’

She was very busy, and Donna Teresa turned to Castiglione.

‘And where in the world have you been since I met you in Florence
last year?’ she asked. ‘I thought your regiment was coming to Rome
at the beginning of the winter. I am sure you told me so.’

‘You are quite right. My old regiment came to Rome before
Christmas, but I had already exchanged into another.’

In spite of herself Maria glanced at Castiglione as he spoke, but
he was not looking at her, nor even at Donna Teresa. From the
place where the booth was situated he could see a certain clump of
ilex-trees that grow near what has always been called the Piazza di
Siena, I know not why. Maria saw that his eyes were fixed on that
point, and she shivered a little, as if she felt cold.

‘Why did you exchange?’ Donna Teresa asked, with the shameless
directness of a thoroughly inquisitive woman. ‘Did you quarrel with
your colonel, or fight a duel with a brother officer?’

Castiglione smiled and looked at her.

‘Oh, no! Nothing so serious! It was only because I was sure that
you no longer loved me, dear Teresa!’

The younger generation of Romans, who have grown up more
gregariously than their parents did, very generally call each
other by their first names. Even Giuliana laughed at Castiglione’s
answer, and Maria herself smiled quite naturally. Five minutes
earlier she would not have believed that anything could make her
smile while he stood there, and she was displeased with herself for
being amused. It was as if she had yielded a little where she meant
never to yield again.

Donna Teresa herself laughed louder than Giuliana.

‘The impertinence of the man!’ she screamed. ‘As if I did not know
that curiosity is my besetting sin, without being reminded of it in
that brutal way! I, love you, Balduccio? I detest you! You are an
odious man!’

‘You see!’ he answered. ‘I was quite right to exchange! And since
you admit that you find me odious, this is an excellent moment for
me to go away!’

He put down a gold piece on the metal counter to pay for the
lemonade which he had not drunk, for he was a poor man and could
not afford to be mean. As a matter of fact, the lemonade which
Maria had so hastily begun to make for him had been finished for
Teresa Crescenzi, but no one had noticed that, and it was all for
charity.

Donna Teresa protested that it was atrocious of him to go away,
but he was quite unmoved. He only smiled at everybody, took young
Saracinesca’s outstretched hand and lifted his hat in a vague
way to the three ladies without looking particularly at any
of them. Then he turned and went off at a leisurely pace, and
soon disappeared in the crowd. Teresa watched Maria Montalto’s
face narrowly, but she could not detect the slightest change of
expression in it, either of disappointment or of satisfaction.
Maria had recovered herself and the sweet warmth was in her pale
cheeks again.

The spring sun was low and golden, and for a few moments the pretty
scene took more colour; by some inexplicable law of nature the many
laughing voices rang more musically as the light grew richer, just
before it began to fade. It was the last day of the fair, and Maria
knew that she should never forget it.

Then the chill came that always falls just before sunset in Rome,
and the people felt it and began to hurry away. No one would ask
for another lemonade now.

Before Maria went home she put the money she had taken into a
rather shabby grey velvet bag. For a few moments she stood still,
watching the fast-diminishing crowd in the distance and the
changing light on the trunks of the pines. Then her eyes fell
unawares on the ilexes, and she started and instantly bent down her
head so as not to see them, and her hands tightened a little on
the old velvet bag she held. Without looking up again she turned
and went under the curtain to the back of the booth where her
footman was waiting with a long cloak that quite hid her pretty
costume; and she covered her head and the crimson kerchief with a
thick black lace veil, and went away towards the avenue where her
brougham was waiting.

Just before she reached it, and as if quite by accident, Oderisio
Boccapaduli came strolling by. He helped her to get in and begged
her to excuse him if he had not come back to the booth before she
had left it, adding that he had met his mother, which was quite
true, and that she had detained him, which was a stretch of his
imagination.

‘Get in with me,’ Maria answered as he stood at the open door of
the carriage. ‘If you are going away, too, I will take you into
town and drop you wherever you like.’

He thanked her and accepted the invitation with alacrity, though he
wondered why it was given. He could not have understood that she
was physically afraid to be alone with her memory just then.

CHAPTER II

Maria asked her friend Giuliana Parenzo to lunch with her the next
day. If Baldassare Castiglione came at three o’clock, and if it
seemed wiser not to refuse him the door outright, he should at
least not find her alone.

The Countess occupied one floor of a rather small house in the
broad Via San Martino, near the railway station. It was a sunny
apartment, furnished very simply but very prettily. After her
husband had left her she had declined to accept any allowance
from him and had moved out of the old palace, in which the state
apartment was now shut up, while the rest of the great building
was now occupied by a cardinal, an insurance company, and a rich
Chicago widow. Maria lived on her own fortune, which was not large,
but was enough, as she had been an only child and both her parents
were dead.

Giuliana sat on her right at the small square table, and on her
left was seated a sturdy boy over eight years old, and lately
promoted to sailor’s clothes. Why are all boys now supposed to go
to sea between six and eight or nine, or even until ten and twelve?

Leone was a handsome child. He had thick brown hair and a fair
complexion; his bright blue eyes flashed when he was in a rage,
as he frequently was, and his jaw was already square and strong.
Maria was the only person who could manage him, and was apparently
the only one to whom he could become attached. He behaved very
well with Giuliana Parenzo; but though she did her best to make
him fond of her, she was quite well aware that she never succeeded
in obtaining anything more from him than a kind of amusing boyish
civility and polite toleration. As for nurses, he had made the
lives of several of them so miserable that they would not stay in
the house, and Maria had now emancipated him from women, greatly
to his delight. He submitted with a tolerably good grace to being
dressed and taken to walk by a faithful old man-servant who had
been with Maria’s father before she had been born. He was not
what is commonly known as a ‘naughty boy’; he spoke the truth
fearlessly, and did not seek delight in torturing animals or
insects; but his independence and his power of resistance, passive
and active, were amazing for such a small boy, and he seemed not to
understand what danger was. Maria did not remember that he had ever
cried, either, even when he was in arms. Altogether, at the age of
eight, Leone di Montalto was a personage with whom it was necessary
to reckon.

Maria knew that she loved him almost to the verge of weakness, but
she would not have been the woman she was if she had been carried
beyond that limit. He was all she had left in life, and so far
as lay in her she meant that he should be a Christian gentleman.
Nature seemed to have made him without fear; and Maria would have
him reach a man’s estate without reproach. It was not going to be
easy, but she was determined to succeed. It was the least she could
do to atone for her one great fault.

Without reproach he should grow up, for his very being was a
reproach to her. That was the bitterest thing in her lonely
existence, that the sight of what she loved best, and in the best
way, should always remind her of the blot in her own life, of
that moment of half-consenting weakness when she had been at the
mercy of a desperate, daring, ruthless man whom she could not help
loving. It was cruel that her only great consolation, the one
living creature on whom she had a right to bestow every care and
thought of her loving heart, should for ever call up the vision of
her one and only real sin.

There were moments when the mother’s devotion to her child felt
like a real temptation, when she asked herself in self-torment
whether it was all for the boy alone, or whether some part of it
was not for that which should never be, for what she had fought so
hard to thrust out of her heart since the day when she had married
Montalto, seven years ago. For she had loved Castiglione even
then, and before that, when she had been barely seventeen and he
but twenty, and they had danced together one autumn evening at the
Villa Montalto, at a sort of party that had not been considered
a real party, and to which her mother had taken her because she
wished to go to it herself, or perhaps because she wanted Montalto
to see her pretty daughter and fall in love with her before she
was out of the schoolroom.

And that was what had happened. It had all been fated from the
first. On that very night Montalto fell in love with her, and she
with Baldassare del Castiglione, whom she had called Balduccio,
and who had called her Maria, ever since they had known each other
as little children. On that night she had felt that he was a man,
and no longer a boy. It was the first time she had seen him in his
new officer’s uniform, for it was not a week since he had got his
commission. But she had hardly known Montalto, who had been brought
up much more in Spain and Belgium than in Rome, because his mother
was Spanish and his father had been a block of the old school, who
feared the (godless) education of modern Italy.

Giuliana Parenzo was a year or two older than Maria, and the latter
had felt for her the boundless admiration which very young girls
sometimes have for those slightly older ones in whom they see their
ideals. Giuliana had been a thoroughly good girl, had married
happily, was a thoroughly good wife, and was the conscientious
mother of five children; but she was very far from being the
saintly heroine her friend’s imagination had made of her.

She was morally lucky. Without in the least depreciating the
intrinsic value of her virtue, it is quite fair to ask what she
might have done if she had ever been placed in the same situation
as her friend. But this never happened to her, though she was
apparently not without those gifts and qualities that suggest
enterprise on the part of admirers. She had been a very pretty
girl, and in spite of much uneventful happiness and five children
she was considered to be a beautiful woman at nine-and-twenty; and,
moreover, she was extremely smart. In looks she was not at all like
a rigid Roman matron.

But temptation had not come her way; it had passed by on the other
side, and she could hardly understand how it could exist for
others, since it certainly had never existed for her. There are
people who go through life without accidents; they cross the ocean
in utterly rotten steamers without knowing of the danger, they
travel in the last train that runs before the one that is wrecked,
they go out in high-speed motors with rash amateur chauffeurs who
are killed the very next day, they leave the doomed city on the eve
of the great earthquake, and the theatre five minutes before the
fire breaks out.

Similarly, there are women who are morally so lucky that an
accident to their souls is almost an impossibility. Giuliana
Parenzo was one of them, and Maria’s affection gave her credit for
strength because she had never faced a storm. Not that it mattered
much, after all. The important thing was that Maria, even at the
worst crisis of her young life, had always looked upon her spotless
friend as her guide and her ideal. Yet there had been a time when
it would have been only too easy for her to look another way.

To-day Maria had turned to Giuliana naturally in her difficulty. It
was hardly a trouble yet, but Castiglione’s return and his intended
visit were the first incidents that had disturbed her outwardly
peaceful life in all the seven years that had passed since her
husband had left Rome. The rest had been within her.

It would not last long. Castiglione had said that he had only a
fortnight’s leave, and with the most moderate desire to avoid him,
she need not meet him more than two or three times while he was in
Rome. To refuse to receive him once would perhaps look to him like
fear or weakness, and she believed that she was strong and brave;
yet she did not wish to see him alone, not because she was afraid
of him, but because to be alone with him a few moments, even as she
had been yesterday afternoon, brought the past too near, and it
hurt her.

Giuliana often lunched with her friend, and was far from suspecting
that she had been asked for a special reason to-day. The two talked
of indifferent matters, much as usual, and presently went into the
drawing-room. It was warm already, and the blinds were closed to
keep out the blazing sunlight and the reflection from the white
street. The friends sat near each other, exchanging a few words
now and then, and both were preoccupied, which hindered each from
noticing that the other was so.

Leone knelt on a chair at the window looking down into the street
between the slits of the green blinds.

‘Summer is coming!’ he suddenly called out, turning to look at his
mother.

‘Yes,’ she answered, smiling at him merely because he spoke. ‘It
will come soon.’

‘But do you know why? There are two bersaglieri in linen trousers.’

‘Yes, dear. They have probably been drilling.’

‘No,’ answered the small boy. ‘They have no knapsacks and no
rifles, and they are not dusty. It is because summer is coming that
they wear linen trousers. I can’t see them any more. They walk so
fast, you know. When shall I be a bersagliere, mama?’

‘Would you not rather be a sailor?’ asked Giuliana.

‘Oh, no!’ Leone laughed. ‘A sailor? To sit inside an iron box
and shoot off guns at other iron boxes? That’s not fighting! But
the bersaglieri, they charge the enemy and kill them with their
bayonets. And sometimes they are killed themselves. But that
doesn’t matter, for they have had the glory!’

‘What glory?’ inquired Maria, watching the small boy’s flashing
eyes.

‘They kill the enemies of Italy,’ he answered. ‘That’s glory!’

He turned to look through the blinds again, doubtless in the hope
of seeing more soldiers.

‘Your son certainly has a warlike disposition, my dear,’ laughed
Giuliana.

But Maria did not laugh; on the contrary, she looked rather grave.

‘All boys want to be soldiers,’ she answered. ‘I’m sure yours do,
too!’

‘No,’ said Giuliana, rising. ‘My boys are almost too peaceable! I
sometimes wish they had more of Leone’s spirit!’

Maria looked at her thoughtfully, thinking at first of what she had
said, but suddenly realised that she had left her seat.

‘You are not going already?’ Maria cried in real anxiety.

‘Yes, dear, I must. It’s a quarter past two, and I have to allow
five minutes for driving to the Quirinal.’

‘You did not tell me that you had an audience to-day,’ said Maria,
deeply disappointed. ‘I’m so sorry! I had hoped you would stay with
me, and that we might go out together by and by. How long shall you
be there? Can you not come directly back?’

Giuliana was a little surprised; she shook her head doubtfully.

‘I’ll try to come back, but I really have not the least idea how
long I may be kept. You see, it’s a special audience to talk about
my working women’s institute, and I have so much to say. I really
must be going, dear!’

She glanced again at her little watch, which was fastened high up
on the close-fitting dove-coloured body of her frock by a little
jade bar carved to imitate the twist of a rope, and just then
the very latest invention in the way of indispensable nothings.
Giuliana, without the least coquetry and with very little vanity as
to her appearance, always seemed to have everything new just a week
sooner than any one else. The truth was that her husband was in
love with her, and likely to remain so, and as he had spent a good
deal of his youth in women’s society, he thoroughly understood
such matters; and he superintended the docile and pretty Giuliana’s
toilet with quite as much care as he gave to the direction of his
subordinates, though he was Under-Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs, with a very promising future before him and a good deal to
do.

Giuliana kissed her friend on both cheeks and said good-bye to
Leone, who did not like to be kissed at all, and in a moment she
was gone.

Maria went to the window where the boy was, and, resting one hand
on his shoulder, she bent down beside him and looked through the
blinds.

‘Have you seen any more soldiers?’ she asked, after a moment, and
as if the question were an important one.

‘Only two,’ he answered. ‘They’re all at dinner now. It’s the
time.’

Her face was close to the child’s as she looked out with him;
and just then he moved his head and his short and thick brown
hair brushed her cheek. She started a little nervously and stood
upright, looking down at the top of his head.

‘What is it, mama?’ he asked without taking his eyes from the
blinds, for just then he saw an officer of the Piedmont Lancers
crossing the street, and the beautiful uniform of that regiment was
always an especially delightful sight.

‘Nothing, darling,’ answered Maria.

As she looked at the short and thick brown hair it seemed to draw
her to it, and she bent slowly, as if she were going to kiss it.
But at that very moment, when her lips were quite near it, her eyes
could see through the blinds, and she caught sight of the officer
before he disappeared.

She drew back and quickly covered her lips with her hand, as if to
put it between her mouth and her child’s head. Castiglione had been
in the Piedmont Lancers before he had exchanged, and the uniform
was the one he had worn when he had first danced with her at the
Villa Montalto, and afterwards, when he had first dined with her
and her husband, and later again, and the last time she had seen
him before he had gone away. The handsome dress was associated with
all her life.

She crossed the room quickly and rang a bell, and waited a
moment, listening for the servant. She would say that she did not
receive, no matter who came. Then she heard footsteps outside the
drawing-room door, and it opened wide and Agostino, the old butler,
announced a visitor.

‘Il Signor Conte del Castiglione.’

When Baldassare entered the room a moment later, Leone had left the
window and was at his mother’s side, holding her hand and eyeing
the man he had never seen, and whose name he had never heard, with
a boy’s boldly inquiring stare; and the blue eyes of the man and of
the child met for the first time.

‘I came early,’ said Castiglione as he advanced, ‘for I was afraid
you might be going to the races.’

‘No,’ Maria answered, steadying herself by the table, ‘I am not
going to the races to-day.’

He held out his hand, and she could not well refuse to take it,
before Leone; its touch was quiet and respectful, and only lasted
an instant, but it was even colder than her own.

‘And this is your son,’ he said, in a rather muffled voice, and he
shook hands with the lad. ‘I’m glad to see you,’ he said. ‘I knew
your mother long before you were born, and we were good friends.
But I have been away all these years. That is the reason why you
have never seen me.’

‘I understand,’ Leone answered. ‘Where have you been?’

Castiglione smiled at the direct question and the unhesitating tone.

‘I have been in many cities. I am a soldier, and have to go where I
am sent.’

At this intelligence Leone felt sure that he had found a new
friend. He looked upon all soldiers as his friends, from the poor
little infantryman in his long grey woollen coat to the King when
he appeared in uniform. He at once laid his hand on Castiglione’s
arm and looked up into his face.

‘Are you a bersagliere?’ the boy asked.

Maria still leant against the table, and as she watched the two,
the man and the boy, and saw their bright blue eyes and their
short and thick brown hair, the room began to move, as if it were
going slowly round her. She had never fainted in her life, but she
realised that unless she made a great effort she must certainly
faint now. She did not hear Castiglione’s answer to the boy’s last
question, but she raised her hand to her mouth, and set her small
teeth upon her forefinger and bit it till a tiny drop of blood
came, and the pain brought her back.

When she could speak steadily she sat down near the closed
fireplace, before which there was a glass screen; she pointed to an
arm-chair opposite, and Castiglione took it.

Leone had been taught that when visitors came in the afternoon he
was to go away after a few minutes without being told to do so.
Accordingly, as soon as he saw that his mother and Baldassare were
going to talk, he went up to the latter and held out his hand.

‘Good-bye,’ he said gravely. ‘The next time you come, please wear
your uniform.’

‘If I come again, I’ll wear it,’ answered Castiglione, smiling.

But Maria saw how earnestly his eyes studied the boy’s face, and
how he held the small hand as if he did not wish to let it go.
He watched the sturdy little fellow till the door was shut, and
Maria saw that he checked a sigh. For the first time in years the
two were alone together within four walls, and at first there was
silence between them.

Maria spoke first, very coldly and resentfully, for since Leone had
left the room she had no reason for hiding what she felt.

‘Why have you come?’ she asked. ‘I told you clearly that I did not
wish to see you. You said, too, that you would come at three, and
when you appeared I was just going to tell Agostino that I would
see no one. You came earlier than you said you would, and it was a
trick to catch me. Such things are unworthy.’

Castiglione had clasped his hands on one knee, and he bent his head
while she was speaking. When she had finished he looked up with an
expression she had never seen in his face, and he spoke in a gentle
and almost pleading tone.

‘Let me tell you what I have come to Rome to say.’

‘I would rather not hear it,’ Maria answered coldly. ‘I would
rather that you should say nothing during the few minutes I shall
have to let you stay--for I do not wish any one to think that I
have turned you out of my house.’

Her face was like a mask, and white, for it cost her much to say
the words.

‘I have not come to persecute you, Maria,’ he answered sorrowfully.
‘I have not loved you faithfully all these years to come and pain
you now.’

Maria Montalto’s lip curled.

‘Faithfully!’ The contemptuous tone told all her unbelief.

‘Yes, I mean it. I have loved you faithfully since we parted, as I
loved you before.’

‘I do not believe you; or I do not understand what you mean by
faith.’

‘It is easy to understand. Since you and I parted under the
ilex-trees I have not spoken of love to any woman. I have lived a
clean life.’

Something clutched at the woman’s heart just then, but the next
moment she spoke as coldly as before.

‘It is easy to say such things,’ she answered.

‘What I say is true,’ returned Castiglione quietly. ‘But if I tell
you this of myself, it is not because I hope to bring your love to
life again. I know how dead that is. I know I killed it--yes, I
know!’

He spoke with the tone and accent of a man in great pain, and
looked down at his clasped hands; but Maria turned her face from
him, for she felt the clutching at her heart again. He must not
know that he was wrong, and that she loved him still in spite of
everything. She would force herself not to believe him.

‘How well you act!’ she said, with cruel scorn.

He did not resent even that. He had violently broken and ruined her
whole life long ago; why should she be kind to him?

‘I am not acting, and I am not lying,’ he answered gravely. ‘I have
been faithful to you all these years. It is no credit to me, and I
ask none, for I love you truly.’

‘How am I to believe you?’ Maria asked, not contemptuously now, but
still coldly. ‘Why should I?’

He raised his eyes and met hers steadily, and she saw that there
was no mistaking the truth.

‘I give you my word of honour,’ he said slowly, and waited.

She could not speak then, because her joy was so great, in spite of
herself; and he would not say more; he only waited while she looked
steadily at the mantelpiece, choking down something and hoping
that he could not see her face clearly in the rather dim light. He
would not stoop to ask if she believed his word, and she was dumb.
It was too much, all at once.

Presently, when she thought she could trust her voice, she tried to
speak. It had seemed a long time.

‘It is----’ she began.

But she broke off, for she felt the great cry coming in the word
that should have followed. Therefore instead of speaking she held
out her hand to him and turned her face away from his. They were
just so near that by leaning far forward he could hold her fingers.
He pressed them quietly for one moment, a little hard, perhaps, but
with no attempt to hold them.

‘Thank you,’ he said, not very steadily.

She had regretted the little impulsive action at once, expecting
that he would kiss her hand, as almost any man might have done with
less reason. But she was glad that he had not; glad, and grateful
to him. Perhaps he knew it, but she was able to speak now; he
should not think that he had gained a hairbreadth’s advantage.

‘I am glad that you have lived a good life,’ she said, much
more kindly than she had spoken yet. ‘But you must not call it
faithfulness. You must not mean that you have been faithful to the
memory of a great sin, of the worst deed you ever did. It would
have been much better to forget me.’

‘You do not understand,’ he answered. ‘My sins are on my soul, and
yours with them, if you have any. I am wicked enough to hope that
I may never forget you, and that I may live till I die as I have
lived since we parted. It is the least I can do, not for your sake,
but out of respect for myself and regret for the worst deed I ever
did. Yes, you are right, it was that. The question that fills my
life is this: Can I in any way atone to you for that deed? Can you
ever forgive me so far as not to hate me, and not to despise the
mere thought of me, so far as to be willing that I should live in
the same city with you and see you sometimes?’

He waited for her answer, but it was long before it came. When she
tried to collect her thoughts she was amazed and frightened by the
change that had come over her in the last few minutes. Her impulse
was to confess frankly that she had always loved him, though she
could not forgive him, and to implore him to go away and never to
come near her again; and then she remembered that she had said
those very words to him long ago under the ilex-trees in the Villa
Borghese, with many cruel ones which neither had forgotten. He had
given up his leave then, and had gone back to his regiment in a
distant city, and he had never come near her nor written to her
since.

But there was more than that, much more. He had lived a clean life.
She knew the world well enough now, and she knew what the lives of
most unmarried men are at Castiglione’s age. Had she not a son to
bring up, for whom she prayed daily that he might grow to manhood
without reproach as well as without fear? She knew something of
how men lived, and she could guess, as far as an honest woman
may, at the daily temptations that must assail a good-looking
young officer in the smartest cavalry regiment in the country; she
guessed, too, that one who chose to live very differently from most
of his comrades might not always escape jests which would not turn
to actual ridicule only because Castiglione was not a man to be
laughed at with impunity; not by any means.

She believed him, and though she might tell him that he was
faithful to a sin, to something dangerously near a crime, his faith
had been for her, and she could not deny it to herself. It was for
her sake that he had not lived like the rest.

Then she covered her eyes with her hand and she saw her own past
life clearly, and dared to look at it. The ugly blot was there,
plain enough; but if the fault had really been all his, why should
the stain look so very black after all those years? He believed
that he had sinned against her, not with her; and so she had told
herself--and had told him so with bitter reproaches before they
had parted. Was it quite, quite true? If it was, she had no cause
to reproach herself for the catastrophe. Yet since that hour she
had accused herself daily. Of what? Of having loved Baldassare
del Castiglione? But she had loved him innocently and dearly when
she was seventeen, and ever since. Her mother had known it, but
he was poor, he was no match for a girl who was something of an
heiress. She had done as many other girls did and always will do;
she had yielded to parental pressure, she had promised herself to
forget, thinking it would be easy; she had married Montalto, making
the great marriage of that season; she had begun to be a wife
believing, poor soul, that she had done right in obeying her mother
as a daughter should. But she had not forgotten.

Even that was no sin. It was her misfortune, and the natural
consequence of a false system that sacrificed too much to money, or
to money and name. She had actually been vain of marrying Montalto,
for though he bore only the title of count, he was an authentic
Count of the Empire, which is quite a different matter from being a
Roman ‘conte.’ It had been a very great marriage indeed, and Maria
had really been a little foolishly vain of becoming his wife. He
had two historic castles in Italy as well as an historical palace
in Rome and an historical estate on the Austrian frontier, and
he was heir to historical lands in Spain by his mother; and he
had a great number of historic ancestors who had been Counts of
the Empire and Grandees of Spain, and hereditary Knights of the
Sovereign Order of Malta. Everything about Montalto was historical,
including his grave face and pointed black beard, and he might have
passed for the original of more than one portrait in his historic
gallery. His family even had a well-attested White Lady who
appeared when one of them was going to die!

But all these things could not make the young wife forget
Baldassare del Castiglione, who was only a more or less penniless
officer in the Piedmont Lancers. The worst of it was that Montalto
liked him, instinctively because his name was also so extremely
historical, and fatally because husbands are the last to discover
their wives’ preferences. Montalto had thrown Maria and Castiglione
together.

She had gone to confession again and again, for she had been
brought up to be very devout. Her confessor told her each time
that she must avoid the man she loved and pray to forget him. She
answered that her husband liked him and constantly asked him to
the house; that she could not beg Montalto to change his attitude
towards a friend without giving a good reason; and that the only
reason she had was that she loved Baldassare with all her heart,
though she was told it was wrong now that she was married, and
she prayed that she might forget him and love her husband. Her
confessor, having ascertained by further questions that she and
Castiglione had avowed their love for each other in bygone days,
long before her marriage, bade her appeal to the young man’s
generosity, and beg him to refuse Montalto’s constant invitations
and to see her as little as possible. But the confessor did not
know the man. Maria followed the priest’s advice, but Baldassare
utterly refused to do what she asked, and became more and more
unmanageable from that day. Surely that was not her fault. It was
not with this that she reproached herself. She had been afraid to
tell Montalto, that was true; there had been one day, at last, when
she should have confessed to him, instead of to the priest; she
should have thrown herself upon his mercy and implored him to take
her away. But then she had lacked courage. She had told herself
that her husband loved her devotedly in his silent, respectful
way, and that to tell him the truth would be the ruin of his
happiness. She felt so sure that his honour was safe! And meanwhile
Castiglione grew more passionate every day, more reckless and more
uncontrollable; and she loved him the more, and he knew it, though
she would not tell him so. She accused herself of that. She should
have gone to her husband for protection, for his happiness was far
less to him then than his honour. Some women would have invented
an untruth as a means justified by the end. Maria might have told
Montalto that she was suffering a persecution odious to her; she
would have saved her husband’s honour and happiness together, and
would even have raised her higher in his esteem. But she could not
do it. It would be base, treacherous, and faithless. So she waited
and prayed against her heart, and hoped against Castiglione’s
nature. Then came the evil hour and it was too late; too late even
to lie. She accused herself of having put off too long the one act
that could have saved her. But still, and to the end, she had told
herself that she had been strong, that she had resisted her own
passion as well as the ruthless man who loved her. She had been
innocent, she repeated; and she had told her confessor nothing more
until she believed that she had changed, and that she hated the man
she had loved so well. Then the priest, who was not worldly wise,
warned her gently against anything so un-Christian as hatred, and
counselled her to forget and to grow indifferent and to devote
herself to her husband’s happiness. That sounded very easy to the
poor priest.

After that she had altogether given up asking advice of him, and
she had let herself be guided by her own sense of honour. Besides,
the day soon came when Montalto accused her; and he would not have
believed her if she had thrown the whole blame on her lover, for
she could not lie and say she had never loved him. So she had not
defended herself, and the great wave had gone over her head, and
her husband, broken-hearted, had left her for ever; but he had
done it in such a way that there had been no open scandal. He had
gone to Spain and had come back again, and had gone away again and
had stayed longer; he had spoken to his friends of his mother’s
wretched health; she could not live in Italy, and Maria could not
live in Spain, and he could not be in both places at once. The
separation, so far as the world saw it, came by degrees, till it
was permanent. Montalto and his wife were not the first couple
that had separated quietly, without quarrelling in public, simply
because they did not like each other. People did not always know
where Maria spent her summers with her child, and the good-natured
ones used to say that she saw her husband then; and she lived in
such a way in Rome that the blame was all laid on Montalto, and
Teresa Crescenzi’s story was believed. Montalto was a brute, who
had often struck his wife when he was in one of his fits of anger,
and she was little less than a saint.

Castiglione sat waiting for his answer. Would she tell him that he
might come back and live near her? Or would she grow hard and cold
once more, and bid him go away again, and for ever?

After a long time she raised her head and looked at him quietly.

‘I cannot answer you at once,’ she said; ‘but I promise that I
will. You said yesterday that you had a fortnight’s leave. When I
have made up my mind what to do I shall let you know, and you must
come and see me again.’

Castiglione shook his head gravely and said nothing.

‘What is the matter?’ asked Maria.

‘I suppose you are going to ask advice of your confessor,’ he
answered very sadly, and not at all in contempt.

But Maria lifted her head proudly.

‘No,’ she said, ‘I am going to ask myself what is right. And in my
thoughts my child shall be the man I hope to make him, and I will
ask him what is honourable.’

‘Will you not trust me for that?’ Castiglione asked, and his face
lightened.

‘That I even consent to ask myself shows that I trust you more
than I did when you surprised me here not half an hour ago. And
now please leave me, for I want to be alone. Perhaps I shall send
for you to-morrow, or perhaps not for a week. If we chance to meet
anywhere, come and speak to me, for people will think it strange
if we avoid each other. But I shall ask you to come here for the
answer to your question.’

‘Thank you,’ he answered gratefully.

Their hands touched each other for a moment, but neither spoke
again, and he went quietly out.

Maria did not send for Castiglione the next day, nor during a
number of days afterwards, and Giuliana Parenzo saw that she was
very much preoccupied and was not looking well. The elder woman
was far too good a friend to ask questions, and when the two were
together she did her best to amuse Maria by her talk. The Marchesa
was not particularly witty, but she sometimes told a story with
little touches of humour that were quite her own. Very good women
are rarely witty, but they often have a happy faculty of seeing the
funny side of things. Wit wounds, but humour disarms.

Giuliana saw, too, that Maria did not like to be alone, even with
Leone. The truth was that she slept little and was very nervous.
Something had come back from the past to haunt her; often a
nameless horror came near her, not at night only, for it was not
the fear of an overwrought imagination, but in broad daylight too,
when she was alone and chanced to be doing nothing. It was the more
dreadful because she could not define it; she could not say that
it was caused by the question Castiglione had asked her, and which
she had promised to answer, but when she thought of that her mind
refused to be reasonable, and the horror came upon her, and she
felt that utter ruin was close at hand, lying in wait for her. She
remembered the sensation well in the old days; she had sometimes
fancied then that she was going mad, and had made great efforts to
control herself, but she had never thought of asking a doctor what
it was, for she had believed, and believed now, that it was a state
of mind rather than the mere effect of anxiety and mental fatigue
on her body. So she suffered much, and quite uselessly; but that
was a small matter compared with the fact that she had promised
Castiglione an answer before his fortnight’s leave was over, and
that after several days she was no nearer to finding one than when
he had left her.

Again and again she thought of telling Giuliana all her trouble
and asking her advice, but she was always deterred by an inward
conviction that her friend would not understand. She was mistaken
in this, but she could not believe that she was. Giuliana knew
something, of course; all Rome believed Teresa Crescenzi’s story,
of which the starting-point was that she had loved Baldassare del
Castiglione innocently, and it was Giuliana who had repeated the
tale to her. Maria had shaken her head, and had answered that there
was not much truth in it, but that people might as well believe it
as invent any other story, since she would never tell any one, not
even Giuliana, exactly what had happened.

‘It does not concern me only,’ she had said gravely.

Giuliana had asked no questions, and Maria had been sure that there
would never be any need of referring to her secret again.

But now the past had come back to ask a question which she could
not answer. She had been in earnest when she had told Baldassare
proudly that she did not mean to go to a priest for advice. He
disliked all priests out of prejudice, as she knew. There might
be good and bad soldiers, lawyers, writers, artists, or workmen,
but in his estimation there could be very few good priests. Yet
it was not to please him that she had said she would not go to
her confessor; it was simply because she was quite sure that she
could trust her own conscience and her own sense of honour to show
her the right way; and perhaps she might have trusted both if her
nerves had not failed her at the critical moment and left her
apparently helpless. She was in great need of help and advice, and
did not know where to go for either.

Meanwhile she had not met Castiglione again. The season was over,
and even at its height she did not go out much. Society is always
dull when one has no object in joining in its inane revels--love,
ambition, stupid vanity, or a daughter to marry--unless, indeed,
one possesses the temperament of a butterfly combined with the
intelligence of an oyster. So it had been quite natural that Maria
should not have met Castiglione during those days, and she had not
chanced to meet him in the street. On his side, he had kept away
from the part of the city in which she lived, but he had gone to
every friend’s house and public place where he thought there was a
possibility of meeting her.

After a week they met by what seemed an accident to them both.
Maria was almost ill, and could no longer bear her trouble without
some help. There was in Rome a good priest of her own class--a
man in ten thousand, a man of heart, a man of courage, a man of
the highest honour and of the purest life. If she had not always
disliked the idea of meeting her confessor in the world, she would
have chosen this man for hers long ago. If he had been in Rome in
the darkest months of her life she would certainly have gone to
him for advice; but he had then been working as a parish priest
in a remote and fever-stricken part of the Maremma, and it was
because his health had broken down that he had been obliged to give
up his labours and come back to Rome. He was now a Canon of Saint
Peter’s, and was employed as Secretary to the Cardinal Vicar, but
found time to occupy himself with matters nearer to his heart. His
name was Monsignor Ippolito Saracinesca; he was the second son of
Don Giovanni, the head of the great family, and he was about forty
years old.

To him Maria Montalto determined to go in her extremity. She was
not quite sure how she should tell him her story, but for the sake
of what she had said to Castiglione she would not put it in the
form of a confession. She would not need to tell so much of it but
that she could lay it before him as an imaginary case--which is a
foolish device when it is meant to hide a secret, but is useful as
a means of communicating one that is hard to tell.

Monsignor Saracinesca was generally at Saint Peter’s at about
eleven o’clock, and Maria made sure of finding him there by
telephoning to the Saracinesca palace, in which he had a small
apartment of his own. At half-past ten she left her house alone,
took a cab and drove across Rome to the Basilica. She got out at
the front and went up the steps, for she had never before been to
see any one in the Sacristy, and was not quite sure of what would
happen if she went directly to it at the back of the church.

She entered on the right-hand side, by force of habit. There is a
very heavy wadded leathern curtain there, and she had to pull it
aside for herself, which was not easy. Just as she was doing this,
and using all her strength, some one pushed the curtain up easily
from within, and she found herself face to face with Baldassare del
Castiglione, and very near him. She started violently, for she was
even more nervous than usual. He himself was so much surprised that
he drew his head back quickly; then he bent it silently and stood
aside, holding up the curtain for her to pass, as if not expecting
that she would stop to speak to him.

‘Thank you,’ she said, going in.

She tried to smile a little, just as much as one might with a word
of thanks; but the effort was so great, and her face was so pale
and disturbed, that it made a painful impression on him, and he
watched her anxiously till she had gone a few steps forward into
the church, for he was really afraid that she might faint and fall,
and perhaps hurt herself, and there was no one near the door just
then to help her.

But she walked straight enough, and he had just begun to lower the
heavy curtain, turning his head as he passed under it, when he
heard her call him sharply.

‘Balduccio!’

It was very long since she had called him familiarly by his first
name, and his heart stood still at the sound of her voice. A moment
later he was within the church, and met her as she was coming back
to the door.

‘You called me?’

‘Yes.’

They turned to the right into the north aisle, and walked slowly
forwards, side by side. There were not many people in the Basilica
at that hour, for it was a week-day, and the season of the
tourists was almost over. At some distance before them, two or
three people were kneeling before the closed gate of the Julian
Chapel. Maria and Castiglione were as much alone as if they had
been in the country, and as free to talk, for no conversation,
even in an ordinary tone, can be heard far in the great cathedral.
Nevertheless Maria did not speak.

‘You are ill,’ Castiglione said, breaking the silence at last. ‘Let
me take you to your carriage.’

‘No. I came here for a good purpose, and I cannot go home without
doing what I mean to do.’

‘I wish with all my heart that I had not come back to Rome to
disturb your peace! It is my fault that you are suffering.’

‘No. It is not your fault.’ She spoke gently. ‘It is a
consequence, that’s all. You had a right to ask me that question,
and you have a right to an answer. But I cannot find one. That is
what is troubling me.’

‘You are kind to me,’ said Castiglione. ‘Too kind,’ he added, and
she knew by his tone how much he was moved.

She turned in her walk before she answered, for they were already
near the Julian Chapel.

‘No,’ she said after a minute, and she bent her head. ‘Not too
kind--if you knew all.’

He looked quickly at her face, but she did not turn to him. His
heart beat hard and his throat felt suddenly dry.

‘Don’t misunderstand me,’ she said, still looking steadily down at
the pavement. ‘I meant, if you knew how much I wish to be just--to
myself as well as to you, Balduccio.’

‘I do not want justice,’ he answered sadly. ‘I ask for forgiveness.’

‘Yes. I know.’

She said no more, and they walked slowly on. At the little gate of
Leo the Twelfth’s Chapel she stopped, and she took hold of the bars
with both hands and looked in, leaving room for him to stand beside
her.

‘Justice,’ she cried in a low voice, ‘justice, justice! To you, to
me, to my husband! God help us all three!’

He did not understand, but he felt that a change had come over her
since he had seen her a week earlier, and that it was in his favour
rather than against him.

‘Justice!’ he repeated after her, but in a very different tone.
‘It would have been justice if I had put a bullet through my head
when I went home that night!’

Maria’s hands left the bars of the gate and grasped Castiglione’s
arm above the elbow and shook it a little.

‘Never say that again!’ she cried in a stifled voice. ‘Promise me
that you will never think it again! Promise!’

He was amazed at her energy and earnestness, and he understood less
and less what was passing in her heart.

‘I can only promise you that I will never do it,’ he answered
gravely.

‘Yes,’ she cried in the same tone, ‘promise me that! It is what I
mean. Give me your sacred word of honour! Take oath to me before
the Cross--there--do you see?’ she pointed with one hand through
the bars to the Crucifix in the stained window, still holding him
with the other. ‘Swear solemnly that you will never kill yourself,
whatever happens!’

He could well have asked if she loved him still, and she could not
have denied it then; but he would not, for he was in earnest too.
He had not meant to trouble her life so deeply when he had come to
ask her forgiveness; far less had he dreamt that the old love had
survived all. A great wave of pure devotion to the woman he had
wronged swept him to her feet.

It was long since he had knelt in any church; but now he was
kneeling beside her as she stood, and he was looking up to the
sacred figure, and his hands were joined together.

‘You have my word and promise,’ he said in deep emotion. ‘Let the
God you trust be witness between you and me.’

He heard a soft sound, and she was kneeling beside him, close to
the bars. Then her ungloved hand, cold and trembling, went out and
rested lightly on his own for a moment.

‘Is it forgiveness?’ he asked, very low.

‘It is forgiveness,’ she said.

He pressed his forehead against his folded hands that rested upon
the bars. Then he understood that she was praying, and he rose very
quietly and drew back a step, as from something he held in great
reverence, but in which he had no part.

She did not heed him and remained kneeling a little while, a slight
and rarely graceful figure in dark grey against the rich shadows
within the chapel. If any one passed near, neither he nor she was
aware of it, and there was nothing in the attitude of either to
excite surprise in such a place, except that it is unusual to see
any one praying just there.

Maria rose at last, stood a few seconds longer before the gate, and
then turned to Baldassare. Her face had changed since he had last
seen it clearly; it was still pale and full of suffering, but there
was light in it now. She stood beside him and looked at him quietly
when she spoke.

‘I have not given you all my answer yet,’ she said. ‘I will tell
you why I came here, because I wish to be quite frank in all there
is to be between us. I told you the other day that I would not go
to my confessor for advice. At least, that is what I meant to say.
Did I?’

‘Yes. That was what you said.’

‘I shall keep my word. But I am going for help to a friend who is a
priest, because I have broken down. I thought I could trust my own
conscience and my own sense of honour; I thought I could fancy my
boy a man, and in imagination ask him what his mother should do.
But I cannot. I am very tired, and my thoughts are all confused and
blurred. Do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ said Castiglione; but in spite of himself his face betrayed
his displeasure at the thought that an ecclesiastic should come
between them.

‘I am going to see a priest whom I trust as a man,’ she went on. ‘I
am going to Monsignor Saracinesca.’

‘Don Ippolito?’ Castiglione’s brow cleared, and he almost smiled.

‘Yes. Do you know him?’

‘I know him well. You could not go to a better man.’

‘I am glad to hear you say that. I may not follow his advice, after
all, but I am sure he will help me to find myself again.’

‘Perhaps.’ Castiglione spoke thoughtfully, not doubtfully. Then
his face hardened, but not unkindly, and the manly features set
themselves in a look of brave resolution. ‘Before you go let me say
something,’ he went on, after the short pause. ‘You have given
me more to-day than I ever hoped to have from you, Maria. I will
ask nothing else, since the mere thought of seeing me often has
troubled you so much. I will leave Rome to-day, and I will not
come back--never, unless you send for me. Put all the rest out of
your mind and be yourself again, and remember only that you have
forgiven me the worst deed of my life. I can live on that till the
end. Good-bye. God bless you!’

She had been looking down, but now she raised her eyes to his, and
there were tears in them that did not overflow. He held out his
hand, but she would not take it.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You are brave and kind, but I will not
have it so. I may ask you to go away when your leave is over, but
not to stay always, and after a time we shall meet again. Before
going you must come and see me. I will write you a line to-night or
to-morrow. Good-bye now, but only for to-day.’

She smiled faintly, bent her head a little, and turned from
him to cross the nave on her way to the Sacristy. He stood by
the pillar and watched her, sure that she would not look back.
She moved lightly, but not fast, over the vast pavement. When
she was opposite the Julian Chapel, which is the Chapel of the
Sacrament, she turned towards it and bent her knee, but she rose
again instantly and went on till she disappeared behind the great
pilaster of the dome, at the corner of the south transept.

Then Castiglione went slowly and thoughtfully away, happier than he
had been for a long time.

But Maria went on, and glanced at her watch, and hastened her
steps. She left the church and traversed the long marble
corridors, where all kinds of people come and go on all sorts of
business whenever the Basilica is open. In the great central hall
of the Sacristy, which is as big as an ordinary church, she asked
the first acolyte she met for Monsignor Saracinesca.

He was close at hand, in the Chapter-House. ‘Would the lady give
her revered name?’ ‘The Countess of Montalto.’ The young man in the
violet cassock bowed low. ‘Monsignor Saracinesca would certainly
see her Excellency.’ ‘Her Excellency’ thanked the young man and
stood aside to wait, out of the way of the many canons and other
ecclesiastics, and choirmen, and singing boys, and other acolytes
who were all moving hither and thither as if they were very busy
about doing nothing in a hurry. In less than half a minute Ippolito
Saracinesca joined her.

The churchman was a man of forty or near that, but was already very
grey, and thin almost to emaciation. He had the wan complexion
of those who have lived long in feverish parts of Italy, and
there were many lines of suffering in his refined features, which
seemed to be modelled in wax. In his youth he had been said to be
like his mother’s mother, and a resemblance to her portrait was
still traceable, especially in his clear brown eyes. The chief
characteristics of the man’s physical nature were an unconquerable
and devoted energy that could defy sickness and pain, and a very
markedly ascetic temperament. Spiritually, what was strongest in
him was a charity that was active, unselfish, wise and just, and
that was, above all, of that sort which inspires hope in those
whom it helps, and helps all whom it finds in need.

It was said in the precincts of the Vatican that Monsignor
Saracinesca was likely to be made a cardinal at an early age. But
the poor people in the Maremma said he was a saint who would not
long be allowed to suffer earthly ills, and whose soul was probably
already in paradise while his body was left to do good in this
world till it should wear itself out and melt away like a shadow.

Ippolito Saracinesca had known only one great temptation in his
life. Unlike most people who accomplish much in this world, he was
a good musician, and was often tempted to bestow upon a perfectly
selfish pleasure some of that precious time which he truly believed
had been given him only that he might use it for others. More
than once he had bound himself not to touch an instrument nor go
to a concert for a whole month, because he felt that the gift was
absorbing him too much.

This was the friend to whom Maria Montalto had come for advice and
help, and of whom Castiglione had said that she could not have
chosen a better man.

‘There is no one in the Chapter-House,’ he said, after the first
friendly greeting. ‘Will you come in and sit down? I was trying
to decide about the placing of another picture which we have
discovered amongst our possessions.’

He led the way and Maria followed, and sat down beside the table
on one of the big chairs which were symmetrically ranged against
the walls.

‘Please tell me how I can serve you,’ said Don Ippolito.

‘It is not easy to tell you,’ Maria answered. ‘I am in great
perplexity and I need advice--the advice of a good man--of a
friend--of some one who knows the world.’

‘Yes,’ said Monsignor Saracinesca, folding his transparent hands
and looking at one of Melozzo da Forlì’s inspired angels on the
opposite wall. ‘So far as you care to trust me as a friend and one
who knows something of the world, I will do my best. But let us
understand each other before you say anything more. This is not
in any way a confession, I suppose. You wish to ask my advice in
confidence. Is that it?’

‘Yes, yes! That is what it is!’

‘And you come to me as to a friend, rather than as to a priest?’

‘Oh, yes! Much more.’

‘And you trust me, merely as you would trust a friend, and without
the intention of putting me under a sacred obligation of silence,
by which the life and welfare of any one might hereafter be
endangered. Is that what you mean?’

‘Yes, distinctly. But that will never happen. I mean that no one’s
life could ever be in danger by your not telling. At least, I
cannot see how.’

‘Strange things happen,’ said Don Ippolito, still looking at the
angel. ‘And now that we understand each other about that, I am
ready. What is the difficulty?’

Maria rested her elbow on the corner of the big table and shaded
her eyes with her hand for a moment. It was not easy to tell such a
story as hers.

‘Do you know anything about my past life?’ she began timidly, and
glancing sideways at him.

He turned his brown eyes full to hers.

‘Yes,’ he said, without hesitation. ‘I do know something, and more
than a little.’

She was surprised, and looked at him with an expression of inquiry.

‘I have always known your husband very well,’ he said. ‘He wrote
to me for advice when there was trouble between you. I was in the
Maremma then.’

‘And it was you who advised him to leave me! Ah, I did not know!’

Maria drew back a little proudly, expecting him to admit the
imputation.

‘No,’ answered Don Ippolito. ‘I did not, but he thought it wiser
not to take the advice I gave him.’

Maria’s expression changed again.

‘Do you know who was--who--was the cause of his going away?’

‘Yes. I am afraid every one knows that. It was Baldassare del
Castiglione, and he is in Rome again.’

‘Yes,’ Maria replied, repeating his words, ‘he is in Rome again.’

He thought he had made it easy for her to say more, if she wished
to tell all, but she was silent. He had heard Montalto’s story
from beginning to end, and upon that he judged her, of course, as
she had allowed herself to be judged by her husband, without the
least suggestion of defence. After all, how could either of the
two men judge her otherwise? How could she tell now what she had
once called the truth? How near the truth was it? She would put her
question as best she could.

‘My excuse is that we loved each other very, very much,’ she said
in a low and timid voice. ‘It was long before I married,’ she
added, a little more firmly, for she was not ashamed of that. ‘But
we parted’--her voice sank to a whisper--‘we parted when it was
too late. And we have never met, nor ever written one word to each
other since.’

As she pronounced the last sentence she raised her head again, for
she knew what that separation had cost, in spite of all--in spite
of what she had called the truth.

‘That was right,’ Don Ippolito said. ‘That was your duty; but it
was brave of you both to do it.’ She felt encouraged.

‘And now he is in Rome again,’ she went on. ‘He has come on leave
for a few days. He came on purpose to ask my forgiveness, after all
these years, because there was something to forgive--at least--he
thought there was----’

She broke off, quite unable to go on.

‘You were very young,’ suggested Don Ippolito, helping her. ‘You
had no experience of the world. Such a man would have a very great
advantage over a very young woman who had been attached to him when
a girl and was unhappily married.’

But Maria had clasped her hands desperately tight together before
her on the edge of the table, and she bent down now and pressed her
forehead upon them. She spoke in broken words.

‘No, no! I know it now! It was not--not what I thought--oh, I can’t
tell you! I can’t, I can’t!’

She was breaking down, for she was worn-out and fearfully
overwrought. Then Monsignor Saracinesca spoke quietly, but in a
tone of absolute authority.

‘Tell me nothing more,’ he said. ‘This is not a confession, and I
cannot allow you to go on. Try to get control of yourself so that
you may go home quietly.’

He rose as he spoke, but she stretched her hand out across the
table to stop him.

‘No--please don’t go away! I have said I forgive him--if there is
anything to forgive--may I say that he is to come back? May I see
him sometimes? We are so sure of ourselves, he and I, after all
these years----’

Monsignor Saracinesca’s brows bent with a little severity.

‘Montalto is living,’ he said, ‘and he is a broken-hearted man.
Since you and he parted you have borne his name as honourably as
you could, you have done what was in your power to atone for your
fault by not seeing your lover. I am frank, you see. Montalto knows
how you have lived and is not unjust nor ungrateful. But for his
mother, I think a reconciliation would be possible.’

Maria started at the words, and turned even paler than before.

‘A reconciliation!’ she cried in a low and frightened voice.

‘Yes,’ answered Don Ippolito, who had resumed his seat. ‘He loves
you still. It is my firm belief that he has never bestowed a
thought on any other woman since he first wished to marry you. I
know beyond all doubt that since he left you he has led a life such
as few men of the world ever lead. No doubt he has his defects, as
a man of the world. I daresay he is not one of those men with whom
it is easy to live, and he is a melancholy and depressing person.
But so far as the rest is concerned----’

He stopped, feeling that he was perhaps defending his friend too
warmly. Maria had bent her head again, and sat with her hands lying
dejectedly on her knees.

‘You know more,’ she said sadly. ‘He has written you that he is
coming back!’

‘No. I only think it possible. But if he did, could you refuse to
live under his roof? Has he wronged you?’

‘He meant to be just! But if he should come back--oh, no, no, no!
For God’s sake, not that!’

She bent her head lower still, and spoke scarcely above a whisper.

‘Remember that he has the right, that it lies with him to forgive,
not with you. If he should do that, and should come, would you not
be glad to feel that after all you had done your best? That so far
as you could help it you had not seen your lover, nor encouraged
him, nor given him the slightest cause to think you would? You
could at least receive your husband’s forgiveness with a clear
conscience. At least you could say that you had not failed again!’

Don Ippolito waited a moment, but Maria could not speak, or had no
answer ready for him. He went on, quietly and kindly.

‘But if you allow Castiglione to come back and live here, and to
see you, even rarely, it will all be different. Think only of what
the world will say; and what the world says will be repeated to
your husband. You have broken his heart, and all but ruined his
life; remember that he loves you as much as your lover ever did;
think what he has felt, what he has suffered! And then consider,
too, that if anything has softened the bitterness of his pain, it
has been the faultless life you have led since. Before God it is
enough to do right, but before the world it is not. Men do not
accept the truth unless it is outwardly proved to them. That is a
part of the social contract by which our outward lives are bound.
Allow Castiglione to come to Rome, to be seen with you and at your
house, even now and then, and the world will have no mercy. It
will say that you are tired of your loneliness, and have taken him
back to be to you what he was. Then people will laugh at Teresa
Crescenzi’s clever story instead of believing it. You came to me as
to a friend, and as what you call a man of the world, and I give
you what I think will be the world’s view. Am I right, or not?’

There was a long pause. Then Maria tried to meet the good man’s
earnest eyes, but her own wandered to one of the angels on the wall.

‘You are right,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Yes, you are right. I
see it now.’

Her gaze was fixed upon the lovely frescoed head, with its glory
of golden hair and its look of heavenly innocence. But she did
not see it; she was thinking that if she did right she must tell
Castiglione never to come back, and that the aching, lonely life
that had seemed once more so full for a brief space was to begin
again to-morrow, and was to last until she died. And she was
thinking that her husband might come back.

Monsignor Saracinesca waited quietly after she had spoken, for
since she admitted the truth of what he urged he felt that there
was nothing more to say. After a little while Maria collected her
strength for the effort and rose from her seat, still resting one
hand on the great table.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You have been very kind. All you have told
me is true. I shall try to follow your advice.’

‘I hope you will,’ answered the Churchman. ‘You will not find it so
hard as you think.’

She smiled faintly, as gentle people do sometimes when they are in
great pain and well-disposed persons tell them that suffering is
all a matter of imagination.

‘Oh, no!’ she answered. ‘I shall find it very, very hard.’

The grey-haired man sighed and smiled at her so sadly and kindly
that she felt herself drawn to him even more than before. She
was standing close to him now, and looked up trustfully to his
spiritual face and deeply thoughtful eyes.

‘I did not know I loved him so much till he came back,’ she said
simply. ‘How could I? I did not guess that I had forgiven him long
ago!’

‘Poor child! God help you!’

‘I need help.’ She was silent for a moment, and then looked down.
‘Do you write to my husband?’ she asked timidly.

‘Sometimes. I have little time for writing letters. Should you like
to send him any message?’

‘Oh, no!’ she cried in a startled tone. ‘But oh, if you write to
him, don’t urge him to come back! Don’t make him think it is his
duty. It cannot be his duty to make any one so unhappy as I should
be!’

‘I shall not give him any advice whatever unless he asks for it,’
replied Don Ippolito, ‘and if he does, I shall answer that I think
he should write to you directly, for I would rather not try to act
as his adviser. I told you that he did not take my advice the first
time.’

‘Yes--but--you have been so kind! Would you tell me what you wished
him to do then?’

The priest thought a moment.

‘I cannot tell you that,’ he said presently.

Maria looked surprised, and shrank back a little, suspecting that
he had suggested some course which might have offended or hurt her.
He understood intuitively.

‘It would be a betrayal of confidence to Montalto,’ he added, ‘to
tell you what I advised him, and what he did not do. But I still
think it would have been better for both of you if he had done it.’

Maria looked puzzled.

‘I am sorry,’ he said, in a tone from which there was no appeal,
‘but I cannot tell you.’

She looked at him a little hardly at first; then she remembered
what every one in Rome knew, that the delicate, shadow-like man
with the clear brown eyes had risked being tried for murder when he
was a young priest rather than betray a confession which had been
anything but formal. Her tired face softened as she thought of that.

‘I am sorry I asked you,’ she said. ‘I did not mean to be
inquisitive.’

‘It was natural that you should ask the question,’ he answered,
‘but it would not have been quite honourable in me to answer it.’

‘I trust you all the more because you refused me,’ she said. ‘And
now I must be going, for I have kept you a long time.’

‘Scarcely a quarter of an hour.’ He smiled as he glanced at the
hideous modern clock on the table.

She left him after thanking him and pressing his thin, kindly hand,
and she made her way back to the church, feeling a little faint.

When she was gone Monsignor Saracinesca returned to the question
of the picture which was to be hung, but for a while he could not
give it all the attention that a beautiful Hans Memling deserved.
He was thinking of what he had said to Maria, and not only of that,
but of what he had said to Baldassare del Castiglione a quarter of
an hour earlier.

For that was the coincidence which had brought the two together
that morning at the door of the church. Castiglione had taken it
into his head to see Don Ippolito on the same day; like Maria,
he had telephoned to the palace and had learned that his old
acquaintance was usually to be found in the Sacristy about eleven;
being a soldier, he had gone punctually at the hour, whereas Maria
had not arrived till fifteen or twenty minutes later, and it was
therefore almost a certainty that they should meet.

It had not been easy for Don Ippolito, taken by surprise as he
was. But Castiglione had put his case as one man of honour may to
another, and had told as much of the truth as he might without
casting the least slur on Maria’s good name. He had loved her
before her marriage, he had said; he loved her still. After she had
been married he had left her no peace, and Montalto had made him
the reason for leaving her. She had bidden him, Castiglione, to go
away and never see her again. He had so far obeyed as to stay away
several years. He had come back at last to ask her forgiveness;
he was not sure of obtaining it--he had not yet met her in the
church--but he came to Don Ippolito as a friend. His love for Maria
was great, he said, but even if she forgave him, he would never
see her again rather than be the cause of any further trouble
or anxiety to her. What did Don Ippolito think? Don Ippolito
considered the matter for a few minutes, and then said that in his
opinion any renewal of friendly intercourse between Castiglione
and the Countess would surely bring trouble and would inevitably
cause her anxiety. If Castiglione loved her in the way he believed
he did, he would think more of her welfare than of the pleasure he
would have in seeing her. If he was sure that his thoughts of her
were what he represented them to be, he could write to her, and
she might write to him if she thought fit. The prelate refused to
say more than that, but the opinion was delivered in such manly
and direct words that Castiglione was much impressed by it; and
when, in the church, he had generously offered to leave Rome at
once, because he saw in Maria’s face all the trouble and anxiety
he feared for her, he had spoken with Ippolito Saracinesca’s
honourable words still ringing in his ears. It was no wonder if
he told Maria that she could not have chosen a better man of whom
to ask help and advice; and though he knew what that advice would
be, and felt sorrowfully sure that she would try to follow it, he
almost smiled at the coincidence as he watched her cross the nave
in the direction of the Sacristy.

And now, when she came back into the Basilica, she retraced her
steps towards the tomb of Leo Twelfth. Again she stopped a moment
and almost knelt as she passed before the Julian Chapel and went on
to the north aisle; but when the small gate before which she had
knelt with Castiglione was in sight she paused in the shadow of
the pillar and leant against the marble, as if she were very tired.

Till then she had not dared to ask herself what she meant to
do, but when she saw the place where she had so lately touched
Castiglione’s hand in forgiveness of the past, the truth rushed
back upon her, as the winter’s tide turns from the ebb to storm
upon the beaten shore.

It was upon her, and she felt that it would sweep her from her
feet and drown her; and it was not the imaged truth she had taught
herself to believe those many years. She gazed at the closed
gate, and she knew why she had forgiven her lover at last. It was
because she wished to forgive herself, and she had found it easy,
shamefully easy. The hour of evil came back to her memory with
frightful vividness, and now her pale cheek burned with shame and
she pressed it hard against the icy marble; and she forced her eyes
to stay wide open, lest if she shut them for an instant, she should
see what she remembered so horribly well.

She would not go to the gate again, now; the words she had said
there had been false and untrue, the prayer she had breathed there
had been a blasphemy and nothing else. For years and years she had
lived in the mortal sin of those brief moments; unconfessing and
unpardoned of God, she had gone to Communion month after month,
telling herself that she was an innocent, suffering woman, doing
her best to atone for another’s crime; yet she had always felt
in the dark hiding-places of her heart the knowledge that it was
all untrue, that she had been less sinned against than herself
sinning, and that if she would die in the faith in which she had
been brought up, and in the hope of life hereafter, she must some
day humble herself and her pride to the earth, and ask of God and
man the pardon she had granted just now as if it were hers to give.

It was too much; it was more than she could bear. In her anger and
hatred of herself she found strength to turn from the pillar and
to go on straight and quickly to the door. Two or three soldiers
who had wandered in were just leaving the Basilica; they lifted the
heavy curtain for her and she thanked them mechanically and passed
out, holding her head high.

CHAPTER IV

Maria hardly knew how she had come home. She had no distinct
recollection of having taken a cab, nor of having driven through
the city, nor of having paid a cabman when she reached the Via San
Martino. There are times when unconscious cerebration is quite
enough for the ordinary needs of life. Maria neither fainted nor
behaved in any unusual way during the half-hour that elapsed
between her leaving the pillar against which she had leant in the
church and the moment when she entered her own room. Even then she
hardly knew that she gave her maid her hat and gloves and smoothed
her hair before she went to her sitting-room to be alone.

But when she was there, in her favourite seat with her little
table full of books beside her, her footstool at her feet and her
head resting at last against a small silk cushion on the back of
the chair--then the one thought that had taken possession of her
pronounced itself aloud in the quiet room.

‘I have been a very wicked woman.’

That was all, and she said it aloud only once; but the words went
on repeating themselves again and again in her brain, while she
leaned back and stared steadily at the blank of the tinted ceiling;
and for a time she turned her head wearily from side to side on
the cushion, as people do who have little hope, and fear that the
very worst is close at hand.

For many years she had sustained a part which her pride had
invented to quiet her conscience. If it were not so, if she had
really been the outraged victim of a moment’s madness, knowing
herself quite innocent, why had she not gone to her husband, as an
honest woman should, to ask for protection and to demand justice?
Because she loved Castiglione still, perhaps; because she was
willing to sacrifice everything rather than accuse him; because
she would rather be dishonoured in her husband’s eyes than see her
lover disgraced before the world. But that was not true; that was
impossible. If Baldassare del Castiglione had been the wretch she
had the courage to tell him he was when she bade him leave her for
ever, Maria Montalto would not have hesitated an instant. He should
have gone where justice sends such men, and she would have asked
her husband to let her end her days out of the sight of the world
she had known.

Her memory brought back the words she had spoken to Castiglione
long ago under the ilex-trees in the Villa Borghese. She remembered
the intonations of her own voice, she remembered how she had
quivered with pain and anger while she spoke, how she had turned
and left him there, leaning against a tree, very pale; for she
had made him believe all she said, and that was the worst a woman
can say. She had called him a coward and a brute, the basest of
mankind; and he had obeyed her, and had left Rome that night
because she had made him believe her.

But later, many months later, when Montalto solemnly accused her
of having betrayed him, she had bent her head, and not one word of
self-defence had risen to her lips; so her husband had turned away
and left her, as she had turned and left her lover. He had been
under the same roof with her after that, at more and more distant
intervals till he had left Rome altogether; but never again, when
they had been alone together, had he spoken one word to her except
for necessity. Yet he had loved her then, and he loved her still;
she had seen in his face that he was broken-hearted, and Monsignor
Saracinesca had told her now that the deep hurt would not heal. She
had played her comedy of innocence to her lover and to herself,
but she had not dared to play it to her husband, lest some act of
frightful injustice should be done to Baldassare del Castiglione.

She had forgiven Balduccio! She laughed at the thought now in
bitter self-contempt. Her soul and her conscience had met face to
face in the storm, and the expiation had begun. She must confess
her fault to God and man, but first to man, first to that man to
whom it would be most hard to tell the truth because she had been
the most unjust to him, to Castiglione himself.

That was to be the answer to his question. There was no doubt now;
he must go away. She could not allow him to exchange again into
another regiment, in order that he might live near her for a time,
nor could she let him leave the service altogether, to pass an
idle life in Rome. Every word that Don Ippolito had spoken was
unanswerable, and there was much more that he had not said. She
might not be able to trust herself after all; after reconciliation,
friendship would come, cool, smiling and self-satisfied, but
behind friendship there was a love that neither could hide long,
and beyond love there was human passion, strong and wakeful, with
burning eyes and restless hands, waiting till the devil opportunity
should come suddenly and spread his dusky wings as a tent and a
shelter for sin. Maria was still brave enough to fear that, and
something told her that fear of herself must be the first step on
which to rise above herself.

She left her seat at last and sat down at a table to write to
Castiglione; but when she tried to word a note it was not easy. It
would not be wise, either, for such words as she wished to send
him are better not written down. Maria realised this before she
had penned three lines, and she tore the bit of paper to shreds at
once. Baldassare was stopping with cousins, and a note might fall
into light-fingered hands.

She rang the bell and told Agostino to telephone to the Conte del
Castiglione saying that she would be glad to see him the next
day at half-past two, if he could come then. In a few moments
the servant brought back the answer. The Conte had been at the
telephone himself and would do himself the honour of calling on the
Signora Contessa on the morrow at half-past two.

The formal reply was so like his messages of old days that it sent
a little thrill through her. Often and often he had come at that
quiet hour, when Montalto was always out of the way, and each time
he had found some new way of telling her that he loved her; and
she, in turn, had listened and had laughingly scolded him, telling
him that she had grown from a silly girl into a grave Roman matron,
and would have no more of his boyish love-making; and, moreover,
that if he was always going to make love to her she would refuse to
receive him the very next time he tried to see her at the hour when
she was alone. And yet she listened to his voice, and he saw her
lip quiver sometimes and her soft pallor grow warmer; and always,
when he sent a message asking to see her at half-past two, the
answer had been that she would probably be at home, and that he
might try if he liked; and when he came, she was there, and alone,
and ready to laugh, and scold, and listen, expecting no danger and
not wittingly thinking any evil.

So his message to-day startled her senses, as a little accidental
pressure on the scar of an old wound sometimes sends a wave of the
forgotten pain through the injured nerve. It was like a warning.

When she was alone she sat down in the deep chair again and leaned
back. It was wrong to be so glad that she was to see him the next
day, but she could not help it; and besides, it was to be the last
time for so long, perhaps for ever. Surely, after all that she
had suffered, she might allow herself that little joy before the
unending separation began!

She was already far from the bitter self-reproach of a few minutes
ago, and the mere thought of his coming had wrought the change. Was
it not in order to be just to him at last that she had sent for
him? Might there not be a legitimate moral satisfaction in humbling
herself before him, and in the thought that she was about to lift
a heavy burden from his heart? Moreover, to be for ever gloomily
pondering on her past fault, now that she had acknowledged it and
was sorry for it, would surely be morbid.

As for the religious side of the matter, she would make her peace
with heaven at once. She would put on a brown veil and go to the
Capuchin church that very afternoon and confess all to Padre
Bonaventura, of whom she had so often heard, but who would never
know who she was. He would impose some grave and wearisome penance,
no doubt; Capuchin monks are notably more severe in that respect
than other confessors. He would perhaps bid her read the seven
penitential psalms seven times, which would be a long affair. But
he could not refuse her absolution since she was really so sorry;
and the next morning she would get up early and go to the little
oratory near by and receive the Communion in the spirit of truth
at last; and when Castiglione came at half-past two she would have
grace and strength to tell what she had to tell, and to bid him
good-bye, even for ever. If she did all this she would earn the
right to that one last little joy of meeting.

She was not a saint yet; she was not even heroic, and perhaps what
she took for a guiding ray of light was anything but that; perhaps
it was little better than a will-o’-the-wisp that would lead her
into far more dangerous ground than she had traversed yet. But
after her resolution was made she felt lighter and happier, and
better able to face the world than she had felt during that long
week since Castiglione had come back.

Then Leone came in, straight and sturdy and bright-eyed; and he
marched across the room to where she sat and threw his arms around
her, as he sometimes did. And though he was but a small boy, she
felt how strong he was when he squeezed her to him with all his
might and kissed her, first on one cheek and then on the other; and
in spite of herself she closed her eyes for a second and drew one
short breath as she kissed him too. He was very quick to see and
notice everything.

‘Did I hurt you, mama?’ he asked almost anxiously.

‘No, dear!’ She smiled. ‘You are not strong enough to hurt me yet,
darling.’

He drew back half a step and surveyed his mother critically, with
his head a little on one side.

‘I wouldn’t, of course,’ he said condescendingly. ‘But if I twisted
your arm and hammered it with my fist I could hurt you. I did it to
Mario Campodonico, and he’s nine, and he howled.’

‘Naughty boy!’ Maria could not help laughing. ‘Why did you hurt
poor Mario?’

‘Poor Mario!’ cried Leone scornfully. ‘He’s twice my size, and
he’s learning to ride. Why shouldn’t I hammer him if I can? He
tried to take away a roast chestnut I was eating. It was in the
Villa Borghese only yesterday. He won’t do it again, though! He
howled.’

Thereupon Leone faced about, marched to the window, and climbed
upon his favourite chair to look for soldiers in the street. He
got up with three quick movements, as if he were going through a
gymnastic exercise. He set one knee and both hands on the seat,
then put the second knee up and both hands on the top of the chair,
then he straightened his back and was in position. Maria watched
him, and her eyes settled on the back of his solid little neck that
showed above the broad sailor’s collar, and on the short and thick
brown hair that was so curly just at that place.

But presently she turned away and mechanically took a book from
the low table beside her. Don Ippolito had said that Montalto
might offer her a reconciliation she did not deserve, and might
come back to take her and Leone to live in the palace again. The
thought chilled her and frightened her, for she could guess at
his expression when he should first see what she had seen every
hour of the day for years. Yet any father might be proud of such a
child--any father! Could such a ‘reconciliation’ be lasting?

That afternoon she took Leone with her and drove out by Porta Furba
to the ruins which the people call Roma Vecchia. They drove across
the great meadow, and when they could drive no farther they got out
and walked, and climbed up till they could sit on one of the big
fragments of masonry and look towards the west. Leone had been
rather silent, for with the exception of an occasional couple of
mounted carabineers on patrol they had hardly met any soldiers at
all. And now they sat side by side in the sunshine, for there was a
cool breeze blowing from the sea and the air was not warm yet.

Leone took no interest in any pastimes earlier than the age of
armour and tournaments; and Maria was glad that he did not ask her
questions about the ruins, for she could not have answered him. She
knew nothing about the Quintilii and very little about Commodus.
She only knew that the great pile was commonly called the ‘Old
Rome,’ and that she loved it for its grand loneliness. But Leone
looked about him, and thought it was a good place for a castle.
Next to soldiers he loved castles and forts.

‘If this belonged to me, I’d build a fortress here,’ he observed
gravely, after a long silence. ‘I’d build a great castle like
Bracciano.’ He had been taken there on a children’s picnic during
the winter. ‘But I’d have lots of guns and a regiment of artillery
here if it were mine,’ he added.

‘What for?’ asked Maria, amused.

‘To defend Rome, of course,’ answered Leone.

‘But no one is coming to take Rome, child,’ objected his mother.

‘Oh, yes, they may!’ He seemed quite confident. ‘If there are no
other enemies, there are always the French and the priests!’

At this astounding view of Italy’s situation Maria could not help
laughing.

‘We are good friends with the French now,’ she said. ‘And who has
been telling you that the priests are the enemies of Italy?’

‘Gianluca Trasmondo says so,’ answered Leone. ‘He knows, for his
uncle is a cardinal. Besides, no priests are soldiers, are they? So
they wouldn’t defend Italy. So they’re Italy’s enemies.’

‘You are wrong, darling,’ answered Maria. ‘The priests have all had
to do their military service first.’

‘What? And wear uniforms, and go to drill, and smoke Toscano
cigars?’

‘I’m not sure about the smoking,’ laughed Maria; ‘but they have to
serve their time in the army, just like other men.’

‘Of course you know,’ said the small boy, who had perfect
confidence in his mother’s facts. ‘I didn’t. I’ll tell Gianluca
to-morrow. All the same, this would be a good place for a castle. I
wonder whose the fields are.’

‘I don’t know, dear. You may run down to the carriage and ask
Telemaco if you like, and then come back and tell me. He knows all
about the Campagna.’

Telemaco was Maria’s coachman, who had followed her when she had
left the Montalto palace--a grey-haired, placid, corpulent man of
great weight and overpowering respectability.

Leone jumped up and ran away at a steady trot, with his elbows
well in, his fists close to his chest, and his head back, as he
had seen soldiers run in drilling. Maria was left alone for a few
minutes, for the carriage was on the other side of the ruins and
two hundred yards away. She leaned on one elbow and looked westward
at the distant broken aqueduct, far away under the sun. She was
thinking of what she should say to the old monk in the Capuchin
church later in the afternoon, and the moments passed quickly.
Before she had determined upon the opening sentence, the boy came
trotting back to her up the little hill. He stopped just before
her, his legs apart and his face beaming with pleasure.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘what do you think? Shall I build a castle here or
not?’

‘I think not,’ answered his mother, smiling.

‘But I think I shall when I am big. It all belongs to me!’

Maria opened her eyes in surprise.

‘To you, child? What do you mean?’

‘I asked Telemaco whose this land was. He said, “It belongs to
your most excellent house.” I said just what you said--“What do
you mean?” He said, “It is as I say, Signorino, for the land here
belongs to his Excellency your papa, and if you see one of the
mounted watchmen in blue about here, he will have the arms of your
house on his badge.” That was what Telemaco said. So you see, when
I am big I shall build a castle here. Why do you look sorry, mama?’

‘I’m not sorry, darling,’ Maria answered with a faint smile. ‘I was
thinking of the time when you will be grown up.’

Leone reflected a little.

‘But why should you look sorry for that, mama? You won’t go away
and leave me when I’m grown up, will you, to go and live with papa
in Spain?’

‘No, dear. I shall certainly not do that.’

Another pause, longer than the first, during which the small
boy watched her face keenly, and she shrank a little before the
fearless blue eyes.

‘Why does papa never come back to see us?’ he asked.

She had expected the question a long time, and had made up her mind
how to meet it when it came; yet she was taken by surprise.

‘Your father’s mother is a great invalid,’ she said, with a little
nervous hesitation. ‘He does not like to leave her.’

‘He might come here for a day sometimes,’ answered Leone, not at
all satisfied. ‘He doesn’t like us. That’s the reason. I know it
is. He doesn’t want us to live in the palace. That’s why we live
where we do.’

‘Hush! You must not say that, my dear. The palace is very gloomy,
and I chose to live in a more cheerful part of the city.’

‘I like it better, too,’ said the boy in a tone of reflection. ‘But
all other people live in their own palaces, all the same.’

‘Most of our friends are many in a family, dear. But we are only
you and I.’

A silence, during which the child’s brain was weighing these
matters in the balance.

‘I’m glad papa never comes back,’ he said at last. ‘You are, too.’

Without waiting for an answer, and as if to give vent to his
feelings, he turned away, picked up a small stone, and threw it as
far as he could over the green grass below the ruins--presumably at
an imaginary enemy of Italy. He watched it as it fell, and did not
seem satisfied with his performance.

‘I suppose David was bigger than I am when he killed the giant with
a pebble,’ he observed rather wistfully.

They drove home.

‘Why didn’t you know that the land out there belongs to us, mama?’
asked Leone, after a long silence, when they were near the Porta
San Giovanni.

‘I know very little about the property, except that it is large and
some of it is in the Campagna.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because no one ever told me about it,’ Maria replied, feeling that
she must find an answer. The boy looked at her gravely, but not
incredulously, and asked nothing more.

CHAPTER V

The sun was sinking when Maria descended the long flight of steps
from the door of the Capuchin church to the level of the street,
and under the grey veil she wore her cheeks were wet with undried
tears. But she held her head up proudly, and her small feet stepped
firmly and lightly on the stones.

She was not in a state of grace by any means, and the tears had not
been shed in repentance for her sins. She hardly ever cried, and
when she did it was generally from anger and bitter disappointment.
The moisture that had risen in her eyes that morning when
Castiglione had offered to go away for her sake had not overflowed;
but now, when she had left the confessional without the expected
absolution, and had seen the hard-faced old monk in brown come out
of his box and stalk stiffly away to the sacristy as if he had done
something very virtuous, she had sat down in a chair in a corner of
the empty church and the burning drops had streamed over her cheeks
like fire till they reached the small handkerchief she held to her
mouth under her veil; and she had bitten hard at the hem, and it
was salt with her tears.

She had been misunderstood, she had been misjudged, she had been
rebuked. She had been told that she was a very great sinner; that
so long as she was willing to love a man who was not her husband,
and who had been her lover, God would not forgive her; that
absolution came from God and not from priests, and that it was out
of any priest’s power to pronounce it while she was in her present
state of mind; that she might come again when she was sure that she
wished never to think of that evil man; that if she felt that she
owed him reparation for having been unjust to him she should write
to him to say so, asking him to destroy the letter, and bidding him
never to come near her again; and that to see him again, even once,
since she still loved him, would be not only a deadly risk but
actually a mortal sin. After this she had been sternly told to go
away, to pray for grace, and to be particularly careful to observe
days of abstinence and fasting, as the devil was everywhere and
never slept.

Now the monk who had heard her confession was a good man and
meant well, and believed that he was speaking for the good of
her soul. He knew well enough from the penitent’s language and
manner of speaking about her life that she was a lady of Rome, and
perhaps one of the great ones who sometimes came to him because
they did not like to go to their regular confessors. But this,
in his estimation, was the best of reasons why Maria should be
treated with the same severity as the poorest and most ignorant
woman of the people. If she had come to him with a religious
doubt or a scruple concerning dogma he would have treated her
very differently, for he was something of a theologian and had
a monk’s love of controversy. But she came to him simply as a
woman, with a perfectly evident mortal sin on her conscience,
and what he considered a perfectly evident desire to compromise
things by pretending that her lover could be her friend. In such
matters he was a ruthless democrat, as many confessors are. She
might be a great lady, she might have been royal, for all he
cared; what was just to one woman’s soul and conscience was just
to another woman’s, all the world over, and where the deadly sins
were concerned there was not to be any distinction between the
poor and the rich, the educated and the ignorant. On the contrary,
educated people should get less mercy, because they ought to know
better than their inferiors, and because they had been brought up
in surroundings where the baser sins of humanity are supposed to
be less common; and finally and generally, because we are told
that the salvation of the rich is to be regarded as a much more
difficult matter than that of the poor. It was certainly not the
business of a Capuchin monk to reverse matters and make it easier.

But the delicately nurtured, sorely tried woman who had come to
unburden her conscience of a sin she had only fully understood
within the last few days, felt as if the well-meaning monk had
thrust out his bony hand from the shadow of the confessional and
had deliberately slapped her cheek.

Therefore Maria Montalto was not in a state of grace, and in her
mortification she called the austere and democratic Capuchin
several hard names; she said to herself that he was ignorant,
that he was a common person, and that it was a scandal that such
a prejudiced man should be a licensed confessor. She bit her
handkerchief hard, tasting the salt of her tears in the hem of it,
because she knew in her heart that there was a little truth in some
of the hard things she had been told.

Her pride and nervous energy came to the rescue after a while, and
she left the church to walk home through quiet streets where no
one was likely to meet her. The evening breeze would dry her face
under her veil, and her anger would help the drying process too,
for it kept her cheeks hot. That morning she had felt very ill and
tired and had vaguely expected to break down, but the afternoon
in the Campagna had done her good, and her temper did the rest.
Castiglione would find her looking wonderfully well when he came
the next day at half-past two.

The sun had set, but it was still broad daylight when she reached
the top of the Via San Basilio. She turned to the right presently,
and almost ran into Teresa Crescenzi, who was walking very fast and
also wore a veil, but was always an unmistakable figure anywhere.

‘Maria!’ cried the lively lady at once. ‘Where in the world are you
going alone on foot at this hour?’

‘I have been to confession and I’m going home,’ answered Maria
without hesitation, and smiling at the other’s quickness in asking
a question which might certainly have been asked of her with equal
reason.

‘So have I,’ answered Teresa with alacrity. ‘What a coincidence!’

But she had not been to confession.

‘Good-bye, dear!’ she added almost at once, and with a quick and
friendly nod she went on down the hill.

Teresa had not gone far when she turned into a deserted side street
and saw Baldassare del Castiglione walking at a leisurely pace a
little way in front of her. A much less ready gossip than she might
well have thought it probable that he and Maria Montalto had just
parted, after taking a harmless little walk together in a very
quiet part of the town.

It was certainly Castiglione whom she saw. There was no mistaking
his square shoulders and back of his strong neck, where the closely
cropped brown hair had an incorrigible tendency to be curly. Teresa
had often noticed that, for she admired him and wished that he were
a more eligible husband; but she was not very rich, and he was
distinctly poor. She often saw him in the summer, and it had not
occurred to her till his return to Rome that he would refuse her if
she suggested that he might marry her. That was the way she put it,
for a lack of practical directness was not among her defects. She
had supposed that he had really quite forgotten Maria by this time,
although her pretty tale about them was founded on the undying and
perfectly innocent affection of both.

Now before she overtook Castiglione, as she inevitably must if
he did not mend his pace, she hesitated whether she should turn
back quietly and take another street. For she had not been to
confession. Then it seemed to her that it would be dangerous to
avoid him, for he was walking slowly, as if he himself were only
keeping out of the way in the side street for a while, and might
turn back at any moment; and if he did, he would recognise her. So
she decided to overtake him and ask him to walk with her till they
could find a closed cab, which was what she wanted.

Having reached this decision a further consideration presented
itself to her mind. He would hardly believe that she could be
coming up behind him without having met Maria, who had certainly
been with him and whom she had just left. He would not like to feel
that this had happened, and that she might even have seen them