I obeyed, feeling secretly much in awe of the rigid little figure sitting very upright opposite me.
"What, after all, is the love of a young man but a passing infatuation?"
This was the first gun fired into the enemy's camp, but there was no answering volley.
That she spoke in all good faith I fully believe, and I felt how useless would be any discussion between us of the point. I looked down in silence.
"Miss Meredith," went on the dry, fluent tones, which I was beginning to feel were the tones of doom, "I will refrain from blaming you in this unfortunate matter. I will merely state the case as it stands. You come into this family, are well received, kindly treated,[Pg 111] and regarded with esteem by us all. In return for this, I am bound to say, you perform your duties and do what is required of you with amiability. So far all is well. But there are traditions, feelings, sacred customs, and emotions belonging to the family where you have been received of which you can have no knowledge. That is not required, nor expected of you. What is expected of you, as of every right-minded person, is that you should at least respect what is of such importance to others. Is this the case? Have you not rather taken delight in outraging our feelings in their most delicate relations; in trampling, in your selfish ignorance, on all that we hold most dear?"
Her words stung me; they were cruel words, but I had sworn inwardly to stand by my guns.
With hands interlocked and drooping head, I sat before her without word.
"We had looked forward to this home-coming of my son," she went on, branching off into another talk, "as to the beginning of a fresh epoch of our lives, his father and I, we that are no longer young. To him we had looked for the carrying on of our race. From my daughter-in-law we have been obliged to despair of issue. Andrea, suitably married and established in[Pg 112] the home of his ancestors, is what we all dreamed one day to see—nor do I even now entirely abandon the hope of seeing it."
With burning cheeks, and an awful sense that a web was being woven about me, I rose stiffly from my seat, and went over to a cabinet where stood my mother's portrait.
I looked a moment at the pictured eyes, as if for guidance, then said in a low voice:
"Marchesa, I have given my word to your son, and only at his bidding can I take it back."
"It does not take much penetration," she replied, "to know that my son is the last person to bid you do anything of the kind. That he is the soul of chivalry, that the very fact of a person being in an unfortunate position would of itself attract his regard, a child might easily discover."
She spoke with such genuine feeling that for a moment my heart went out towards her; for a moment our eyes met, and not unkindly.
"No doubt," she went on, after a pause, and rising from her seat, "no doubt you represented the precautions we thought necessary to adopt, for your own protection as well my son's, as a form of persecution. If you did not actually represent it to him, I feel[Pg 113] sure you gave him to understand that such was the case."
She had hit the mark.
With an agonizing rush of shame, of despair, I remembered my own outbreak on the piazza that morning; how I had confided to Andrea, unasked, my intention of going away, and of the sorrow the prospect gave me.
Had I been mistaken? Had the message of his eyes, his voice, his manner, meant nothing? Had I indeed been unmindful of my woman's modesty? The Marchesa was aware at once of having struck home, and the monotonous tones began again.
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CHAPTER XII. THE BREAKING OF THE STORM.
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CHAPTER XIV. RELEASED FROM HER VOW.
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