Gianluca was amused, but he thought over what Taquisara had advised him to do, and the more he thought about it, the more inclined he was to follow the advice. Not that he regarded the writing of letters to Veronica at all as a hopeful means of moving her; but he felt that he might write her much which he would not say. He loved her with the deepest sincerity, and with an almost morbid passion, and the idea of approaching her in any way was irresistible. He had not realized before now that he could at least try the experiment of writing. She knew that he loved her, and at the worst, she might tell him not to write again. He remembered his terrible awkwardness and hesitation when he had first told her of his love, and his humiliation afterwards, when he had reflected upon the poor figure he had made. There would be no humiliation, now. He was sure of that. He could rely upon his pen and his wits, though he could not trust to his wits with only his tongue to help them.

The chief objection to this method of wooing was that, in his class, it was untraditional. And this had some weight with him, for he had been brought up rigidly in the practices and customs of an exclusive caste. On the other hand, he had never thought of plunging rashly into love-phrases, from the first. He wished to establish a correspondence with Veronica, and then by subtle tact and delicate degrees to acquire the right of speaking to her, by his letters, of what he felt, making no reference to them when he met her, until she should at last give some sign that she would listen favourably.

The plan was wise and far sighted, but it had not been the result of wisdom nor of diplomatic instinct. He adopted it out of delicacy, and out of respect for the woman he loved, and in the hope of reaching her heart without ever jarring upon her sensibilities.

By nature and talent, as well as by cultivation, Gianluca was admirably gifted for such a correspondence as he now attempted to begin. In other circumstances of fortune he might have become eminent as a man of letters. Without possessing any of that practical, masculine knowledge of women, which Taquisara so roughly expressed, Gianluca had a keen and sure understanding of the feminine mind. There is no contradiction in that, for the men who know something of women's hearts by instinct and experience are by no means always those who are in intellectual sympathy with them. Very young women are sometimes surprised when they discover this fact, but men generally know it of one another; and the man of whom other men are jealous is rarely the one who prides himself upon knowing and sympathizing with the feminine point of view on things in general, from literature to dress.

Gianluca had talked with Veronica about all sorts of subjects, and she had often asked him questions which he had not been able to answer on the spur of the moment. It was easy for him, in his first letter, to hark back to one of those idle questions of hers, and to make his reply to it an excuse for a letter. Such a communication would need no acknowledgment beyond a spoken word of thanks, which she would bestow upon him the next time they met. It should contain nothing warmer than the assurance of his anxiety to be of service to her, in anything she undertook, and a protestation of respectful friendship at the end.

He wrote that first letter over twice and read it carefully before he sent it. It referred to an historical question connected with the house of Anjou, from which her castle of Muro had come to the Serra by a marriage, several centuries ago, and by which marriage Veronica traced her descent on one side to the kings of France. The castle itself had been twice the scene of royal murders, and there were many strange traditions connected with it. Gianluca got the information he needed from the library downstairs, and he found ample material for a letter of some length.

But it was not dry and uninteresting, a mere copy of notes taken from histories and chronicles. The man had an undeveloped literary talent, as has been said, and he instinctively found light and graceful expressions for hard facts. He was himself discovering that he had a gift for writing, and the pleasure of the discovery enhanced the delight of writing to the woman he loved. The man of letters who has first found out his own facility in the course of daily writing to a dearly loved woman alone knows the sort of pleasure that Gianluca enjoyed, when he found that it was his pen that helped him, and not he that was driving his pen.

He sent what he had written, and determined that on the following day he would go to the villa again. To his surprise and joy, he received a note from Veronica in the morning, thanking him warmly for the pains he had taken, and asking another question. It came through the post; and with his insight into feminine ways, he guessed that she had not wished to send a messenger to him,—a servant, who would have at once told other servants of the correspondence.

Veronica had been pleased by the letter. She was beginning to like him for himself, and to forget how very foolish he had seemed to be when he was declaring his passion for her. But his letter showed him all at once in an entirely new light, and was at once a pleasure and a surprise. She thought it natural to write him a few words of thanks. Indeed, it would have seemed rude not to do so.

In the liberty she was enjoying in Bianca's house, she was rapidly forgetting that she was only a young girl, and that society would be shocked if it knew that she was exchanging letters with Gianluca della Spina. There is nothing which a girl learns so easily and all at once as independence of that social kind. What grey-haired man of the world has not at one time or another been amazed at the full-grown assurance of some bride of eighteen or nineteen summers? A month is enough—with proper advantages—to make a drawing-room queen and a society tyrant of a schoolgirl. And that sort of independence is not alone the result of marriage. In Veronica's case, a slowly developed strength had been suddenly set free to act, by an accidental emancipation from all semblance of restraint; and the emancipation was so complete that even in the widest interpretation of the law, no one could have now claimed a right to control or direct her actions.

She was nearly twenty-two years of age; she had a great position in her own right, and she was immensely rich. It was not until long afterwards that she learned how many offers of marriage had been refused for her by her aunt and uncle. For the present, the fathers and mothers of marriageable sons were waiting until three or four months should have elapsed, for they generally guessed that there had been a catastrophe of some sort at the Palazzo Macomer after Bosio's death; and, moreover, as has been seen, it was impossible to ascertain the proper person to whom to address any such proposal.

The consequence of it all was, that Veronica was absolutely her own mistress, and free to go and come, and to do what seemed right in her own eyes. As she had told the cardinal, when she and society should discover that they needed each other, they would try and agree. In case of a disagreement, it was probable that, of the two, society would yield to Veronica Serra. Meanwhile she would correspond with Gianluca, if she pleased. During the arrangement of her affairs, she had constantly written to men, about business, under the advice of the bankers to whom she had confided the whole matter. Gianluca was merely a few years younger, and happened to belong to her own class. That was all. Why should he and she not write to each other? Yet it was not long since the idea of meeting Gianluca at Bianca's house, by agreement, had seemed a dangerous adventure, about entering upon which she had really hesitated. To-day, for any reasonable cause, she would have walked through Naples with him in the face of the world, at the hour when every one was in the streets.

He came to the villa in the afternoon, after receiving her note of thanks, and she was glad to see him, and spoke with pleasure of his letter, before Bianca, who seemed surprised, but said nothing at the time. He was wise enough not to stay too long, and he went away exceedingly elated by his first success.

"What is the matter with him?" asked Veronica, of her friend, just after he had left them. "He seems so much better—but he is growing very lame. Did you notice how he walked to-day? He seems to drag his feet after him."

"He must have hurt his foot," said Bianca, calmly. "By the by, what is this, about letters? Do you mean to say that he writes to you?"

"Yes—and I write to him," answered Veronica, with perfect calm. "You see, as I have nobody to ask, I ask nobody. It is more simple."

"But, my dear child—a young girl—"

"Do not call me a child, and do not call me a young girl, Bianca," said Veronica. "I am neither, in the sense of being a thing to be kept under a glass case and fed on rose leaves. I am a woman, and as I do not think that I shall ever marry, I refuse to be chaperoned all the way to old-maidhood. I know that you feel responsible for me, in a sort of way, because you are married, and I am not. It is really absurd, dear. I am much better able to take care of myself than you are."

"No doubt, in a way. You are more energetic. But as for writing to Gianluca—I hardly know—I wish you would not."

"He writes very well," answered Veronica. "I will show you his letter. Besides, so far as your responsibility goes, it will not last much longer. I shall go to Muro next month."

"Alone?"

"Alone—yes. I always mean to live alone. Don Teodoro will come and dine with me every evening, and we will talk about the people, and what we are doing for them. I shall have horses to ride. If you will come, we will fence together. I shall miss the fencing dreadfully. Could you not come, Bianca dear?"

"I believe that you will miss the fencing more than me, dear," answered Bianca, rather sadly.

Veronica was more to her than she could ever be to Veronica, and she knew it.

"Bianca!" exclaimed the young girl. "How can you say such things! Because I spoke of fencing first? You know that I did not mean it in that way! I want you for yourself—but it will be nice to have the foils in the morning, all the same. You see, I could not even have a fencing-master out there. It is so far! Do come."

Bianca shook her head.

"We will have glorious days together," continued Veronica. "We will do all sorts of things together. They do say that it rains a good deal in those mountains—well, when it rains, you can write to Signor Ghisleri, while I write to Don Gianluca."

Her innocent laughter at the idea startled Bianca, and the beautiful face grew paler, until it was almost wan. Veronica thought she was like a passion flower, just then. A short silence followed.

"Veronica," said Bianca, at last, "why do you not marry Gianluca, since you have grown to liking him so much?"

"I like him for a friend," answered Veronica, quietly. "I do not want a husband. Some day, I will tell you my story, perhaps—some day, if you will come to Muro, dear. Think about it."

She left the room rather abruptly, and Bianca did not refer to the subject again. She had the power, rare in either of two friends, of not asking questions. Confidence given for the asking, however readily, is but the little silver coin of friendship; the gold is confidence unasked.

In the days that followed, Gianluca wrote to Veronica again and again, about all manner of subjects which had come up in their conversation; and Veronica's short notes of thanks grew longer, until she found that she, too, was beginning to write real letters, and looked forward to writing them, as well as to receiving his. And his came oftener, until she had one almost every day.

But when he came, as he did, twice a week, to the villa, they rarely spoke of their correspondence. Somehow it had come to be a bond linking certain sides of their natures which they did not show to each other when they met and talked. They never could talk as freely as they wrote, even upon the most indifferent subjects, though Gianluca seemed perfectly at his ease in conversation. There was a sort of undefined restraint from time to time, together with the certainty that they would write what they really meant, within a day or two, and understand each other far better than by spoken words.

In Gianluca's case such a condition of things was natural enough. He felt that she understood friendship when he meant love, and he was aware that he was progressing slowly but surely towards the freedom to say what was always in his heart, while his success must depend upon his wisdom and tact in not surprising her with a declaration of passion, in the midst of a discussion upon church history or modern systems of charity. Compared with what he had felt in their former relations, he was happy, now, beyond his utmost expectations; and, in the relative happiness he had found, he was willing to be patient, rather than to risk anything prematurely.

It was more strange, perhaps, that Veronica should regard this growing intimacy as she did, for she had no under-thought of a future change to something else, as he had, and she was naturally simple in reasoning and direct in action. Yet she could not but be aware that there was a sort of duality in their friendship, and she never confused the ideas they exchanged when in the one state—that is to say, when writing—with those about which they talked when an actual meeting brought them into the other. The one state already was an intimacy; the other was hardly yet more than a pleasant acquaintance, with the memory of a disagreeable beginning. Such curiosities of human intercourse are more easily understood by those who have met with them in life than explained to those who have not. The facts were plain. When Veronica and Gianluca were together in Bianca's drawing-room, they said nothing which might not have been heard with indifference by all Naples. When they wrote to each other they spoke of themselves, of their real thoughts about things and people, of their belief, and, to some extent, of their feelings.

Veronica did not perhaps acknowledge that, little by little, Gianluca's letters were beginning to fill the place of poor Bosio's conversation in former times. But that was what was taking place. She was more lonely in mind than in heart, and without making the slightest pretence to talent or unusual cultivation, she craved a mental companionship of some sort to take up the thread where it had been broken. She had found it unexpectedly in her new friend's letters, and she recognized it and clung to it, as to something almost necessary in her existence. When she was ready to go up to Muro, she knew that without those letters life in such a solitude would be well nigh unsupportable, whereas, being able to look forward to them, and to answering them, her hours of idleness were already a foretasted pleasure.

She had not even told the cardinal that she was going, and she was going alone. In Naples this seemed so incredible that after she was gone, people spontaneously invented a companion for her and assured one another that she had sent for a distant and elderly old-maid cousin as a chaperon and protectress. Even the cardinal believed it, taking it almost for granted.

On the afternoon of the day before her departure Gianluca came, walking with difficulty and excusing himself for bringing his stick with him into the drawing-room. He was very pale, and looked more ill than for a long time past. But he spoke calmly enough, though saying little more than was required, while Bianca and Veronica kept up the conversation. Veronica was in good spirits and was evidently looking forward to the journey with pleasure and curiosity.

Then Ghisleri appeared, followed shortly by Taquisara, who had called very rarely during the winter. Veronica thought that he had grown very cold and silent. He slowly stirred a cup of tea which he did not drink, and he scarcely joined in the conversation at all. He looked occasionally at one or another of the party, and once or twice his eyes fixed themselves on Veronica's face. She could not understand why his presence chilled her, but she was aware that she spoke more coldly than usual to Gianluca.

At the end of half an hour, the latter rose to go, glancing at Veronica as he did so. Taquisara, on pretence of setting down his tea-cup, rose also and managed to place himself in front of Bianca, and said something to which Ghisleri gave an answer, just as Veronica and Gianluca were standing close together.

"May I go on writing to you?" asked Gianluca, in a low tone and quickly.

Veronica looked up at him with a startled expression.

"Oh please—please!" she answered anxiously. "As often as you can—I count on it! Of course!"

Gianluca's thin, pale face brightened suddenly as he heard her vehement request and the anxiety in her tone.

"Thank you," he said. "Good-bye."

He shook hands with Bianca, nodded to the two men, and turned away towards the door. He had not reached it, walking a little less painfully in his excitement, when he was aware that he had left his stick leaning against the chair in which he had sat. He stopped and looked back to be sure that it was there, before returning to get it. Veronica was watching him, saw what he had done, picked up the stick and carried it swiftly to him before he could come for it.

Taquisara had seen her movement and had tried to get the stick before she could, to take it to his friend. He had been too far out of reach, and she had been before him. But he followed her, and he saw that as she handed Gianluca his property, she looked up into his face and smiled very kindly. Gianluca thanked her, smiling too, and the impression any one would have had was that they thoroughly understood each other. He bowed again and went out. Veronica turned to come back to the tea-table and found herself facing Taquisara's fiery eyes. She was surprised, and looked into his face, very near to him, and waiting for him to stand aside.

"You are playing with him," he said in a low and angry voice.

The room was long, and Bianca and Ghisleri were at the other end of it. After he had spoken, Veronica stared at him a moment, in genuine amazement at his words and manner. Then her eyes gleamed, too, and the delicate nostrils quivered.

"You are insolent," she said coldly, and turning a little to the right, she passed him.

"No. I am his friend," he answered, scarcely above a whisper, as she went by.

He came back, shook hands with Bianca, bowed coldly to Veronica, and left the room within two minutes after Gianluca.

"What is the matter with Taquisara?" asked Ghisleri, carelessly. "He seems irritable."

Bianca looked at Veronica.

"Does he? I suppose he is anxious about Don Gianluca."

Veronica was still pale when she spoke, but the tone was cold and indifferent.



CHAPTER XVIII.

Veronica had felt herself mortally insulted by Taquisara's manner, much more than by his words, though they had been offensive enough. Her impression of the man was completely changed, in a moment, and she hoped that she might never see him again, so long as she lived. It had been one thing to praise Gianluca to her, and to press his suit for him; it was quite another to lie in wait for her, as it were, at the end of a drawing-room and to reproach her brutally and angrily with wishing to break Gianluca's heart. As she thought of his eyes, and his face, and his low voice, she grew pale with anger herself, at the mere memory of his insolence.

It did not strike her that there could be any truth in his accusation. Gianluca was old enough to take care of himself. Was Taquisara his nurse, his keeper, his doctor? Gianluca was not making love to her in his letters, nor was she, in hers, encouraging him to do so. She was angry at the thought that the Sicilian should know anything of their correspondence, as it seemed evident that he must. It was true that her own friend, Bianca, knew something about it. She could forgive Gianluca, if he had confided too much in Taquisara, but she could not forgive Taquisara for having been the recipient of the confidence, and she would neither forgive nor forget the way in which he had shown her how much he knew.

For the first time in her life, Veronica longed to be a man, that she might not only resent the insult, but have satisfaction of the man who had insulted her. She felt that she was emphatically not playing with Gianluca, as Taquisara had expressed it. She had told him frankly, several months earlier, that she could not love him,—she had shaken her head and had said that she was sorry,—and neither he nor any one else had a right to suppose that she was now changing her mind. Since Gianluca was apparently willing to accept the position and to be her friend, it was nobody's affair but his and hers. She felt that she had been fully justified in what she had said to Taquisara. At the same time she was half conscious of being disappointed in the man, and of being wounded by the disappointment.

She left Bianca's house early, and as she drove away to the railway station alone with Elettra, she felt that her life was only now really beginning. The months of independence she had enjoyed had prepared her for this final move. In the course of setting her affairs in order, she had been brought face to face with a side of the world which few women ever see or understand, and her character had hardened singularly to meet the difficulties she had found in her path. She probably overestimated the strength she had now acquired; for more than once, on the way to the station, she felt a momentary reaction of timidity and a longing to go back and stay a few days more with Bianca. She laughed bravely at herself for her weakness, and told herself that she was going to her own place, to be surrounded by her own people, that she was two-and-twenty years of age and had been through troubles during the past months which had proved her strength. Nevertheless, the fact remained that she was a very young, unmarried woman, that she was going to live alone, and that she was breaking through the whole hard shell of fossilized social tradition. Even Elettra, born a peasant of the mountains, thought her mistress's decision amazingly bold, though she approved of it in her heart, and had been ready to go to Muro with Veronica long ago.

"What would your father, blessed soul, have said, Excellency?" she asked, when they were seated together in the train which was to take them to Eboli, beyond Salerno.

"Shall I send for the Countess Macomer?" asked Veronica, with a smile.

"Heaven preserve us from her!" exclaimed Elettra, and she crossed herself hastily, and then made the sign of the horns with her fingers, against the evil eye, and with her other hand touched a coral charm which she had in her pocket.

Veronica had long been in correspondence with Don Teodoro about the arrangements for her coming. He had expected that she would bring a staff of servants from Naples with all the paraphernalia of a great establishment. She had replied that she intended to employ only her own people, and meant to live very simply. He suggested that she should send a quantity of new furniture, as the apartments in the castle had not been inhabited for nearly twenty years, but Veronica answered that she needed no luxuries, and repeated that she meant to live very simply indeed. She sent her saddle horse and two pairs of strong cobs with two country carriages and a coachman—a very young man, who had served in Gianluca's regiment and had been his man. He was to find a man in Muro to help him in the stables, and he was the only servant, not a native, whom she meant to employ. Don Teodoro had kept ten people at work for a month in cleaning the vast old place. Veronica had sent also a box of books, some linen and silver, and her fencing things—for she still hoped that Bianca would pay her a visit.

The journey by rail occupied between four and five hours, but it did not seem so long to her. She was surprised at the excitement she felt, as she passed station after station and watched the changing sights and the mountains that loomed up in the foreground, while those behind her dwindled in the distance. She had travelled very little in her life, since she had come back from Rome.

On the platform of the little station at Eboli, Don Teodoro was waiting for her. His tall bent figure and enormous nose made him conspicuous at a distance, and she could see the big silver spectacles anxiously searching for her along the row of carriage windows. As the door was opened for her she waved her handkerchief to the old priest, with a little gesture of happy enthusiasm, high above her head, and he saw her immediately and came forward, three-cornered hat in hand. She suddenly loved the smile with which he greeted her.

"You, at least, do not think that I am mad to come to Muro, do you?" she asked, standing beside him on the platform while Elettra was handing out her smaller belongings.

"Not at all," answered the old man. "You are coming to take care of your own people, and it is a good deed. Good deeds generally seem eccentric to society—and considering their rarity, that is not extraordinary."

He smiled again, and Veronica laughed.

"Your carriage is here," said Don Teodoro. "May I take you to it? Will you give me the tickets, Elettra? They take them at the gate."

Veronica felt a new thrill of joyous freedom and independence, as for the first time in her life she set her little foot upon the step of her own carriage, and glanced at the simple, well-appointed turnout. The coachman sat alone in the middle of the box, a broad-shouldered, clean-shaven young fellow of six-and-twenty, in a dull green livery with white facings—the colours of the Serra.

"You would not even have a footman," observed Don Teodoro.

"No—not I!" she laughed, still standing in the carriage. "How are the horses doing, Giovanni?" she asked of the coachman. "Are they strong enough for the work?"

"They are good horses, Excellency," the man answered. "They need work."

"And how is Sultana?" inquired the young girl, who had not seen the mare for several days.

"The mare is well, Excellency."

Veronica made Don Teodoro sit beside her, and Elettra installed herself opposite them, with her mistress's bags and other things. The luggage was piled on a cart which was to follow, and they drove away.

"I sent the carriage down yesterday," observed Don Teodoro. "I came by the coach this morning."

"Is it so far?" asked Veronica, whose ideas about the position of her property were still uncertain, for it had never struck Elettra that her mistress did not know how far it was from Eboli to Muro.

"It is over thirty miles," answered the priest, with a smile. "We are beyond civilization in Muro—we are in the province of Basilicata. But there are little towns on the way, and you must stop to rest the horses and to eat something. It will be almost dark when you get home."

"Home!" repeated Veronica, thoughtfully.

A confused vision rose in her mind, of an imaginary room, looking down from a height upon a town below—a room in which she would live altogether, with her books and her favourite objects and the companionship of her favourite ideas and plans, all of which were to be realized and executed in the course of time. She fancied herself gazing down from the wide window upon what was almost all hers, upon the dwellings of people who lived upon her land, who pastured her flocks and drove her cattle, living, moving, and having being as integral animate parts of her great inheritance; children of men and women whose fathers' fathers had laboured in old days that she might have and enjoy the fruits of so much toil, who had given much and from whom had often been taken even that which they had not been bound fairly to give; who had received nothing in return for generations of blood and bone worn out, dried up, and consumed to dust in the service of the great house of Serra. They had a right to her, as she had a right to the lands on which they lived. There was much talk of rights, Veronica thought, nowadays, and those who had none were privileged to speak the loudest and to be heard first. But those who, having right on their side, were blinded and smitten dumb by the enormous despotism of their self-styled betters—by the glare and noise of blatant power in possession—they were the ones who really had rights, and if she could give any of them a single hundredth part of what was their due, she should be glad that she had lived. Wealth, she thought, should not be an accumulation, but a distribution, of goods. Charity should no longer mean alms, nor should poverty be pauperism. In the young, whole-hearted simplicity of her desire to do good, it seemed likely that she might soon be a specimen of the strangest of all modern anomalies—the princely socialist. It was certainly in her power to try almost any experiment which suggested itself, and on a scale which might ultimately prove something to herself and others.

It was not that she meant to study political economy, or socialism, nor to give the name of an experiment to anything she did. She had been struck by the practical necessity for doing something, when Don Teodoro had first written to her about the condition of the people in Muro, and her own observations made on her farms in the Falernian district—one of the richest corners of vine land in all Italy—had convinced her that some sort of action was urgently necessary. And if, in the midst of such riches, the Falernian peasants were half starved, what must be the state of the people on her lands in the Basilicata? Don Teodoro had drawn her an accurate picture, full of those plain details which carry more than the weight of their mere words. Something should be done at once. She had given him power and money to help the very poorest, before she came; but her common sense told her that the evil lay too deep in the soil to be reached by a light shower of silver—or even by a storm of gold rain.

Inventors, great or small, are rarely theorists; the invention must be suited to the necessity, before all things, and the theory may come afterwards if anybody cares for it. For a theory is nothing but an attempted explanation, and the fact must exist before it can possibly need explaining. Bread is a great invention against hunger, and a man needs to know nothing about the gastric juices to save himself from starvation when the loaf is in his hand. Veronica meant to put the loaves where they were needed, within reach of those who needed them.

As she was driven through the rugged country on that May afternoon, she felt that she had a future before her, that she was going into action, and leaving stagnation behind, and that her own life, which was to be her very own, was just beginning. It was to be a life quite different from the existence of any one she knew, for, unlike the lives of her friends, hers was to have an integral, independent existence of its own, with one determined object for all its activity.

The months she had passed in Bianca's house had rather strengthened than weakened the unformulated resolution which she had first vaguely reached in the dark days after Bosio's death. There had been much solitude, and many rides and drives into the country with her beautiful, silent friend; and there had been very little contact with the world to disturb the onward current of her thoughts. More than all, the first breath of liberty after long restraint had enlarged and widened her determination to be always free, in spite of the world, and society, and the drone of the busy-bodies' gossip. In her heart, the memory of Bosio had grown in dignity, till it was solemn and imposing out of all proportion with what the man himself had been, even as Veronica had known him. To know the truth of what his real life had been would have shaken her own to its foundations. But there was no fear of that; and now, her chief companion was to be the priest who had loved him as a friend. Possibly that last fact had even influenced her a little in her final determination to live at Muro, rather than in any other of four or five equally habitable or uninhabitable places which she owned, and where she might have begun her work under circumstances quite as favourable to success.

She had thought very little of any need she might feel for relaxation and amusement, and she was very far from realizing what that solitude meant, which she was seeking with so much enthusiasm. She had never yet been as much alone as she should have liked to be, and she could not imagine that she might possibly become tired of playing the princess in the tower for months together, with only the company of one learned old ecclesiastic as her sole diversion. The vision of home which she evoked was always the same, but she did not even know whether the castle had a room which looked down upon the little town. She imagined but a single room; the rest was all a blank. She had been told that it was a great old fortress, with towers and halls and courts, gloomy, grand, and haunted by the ghosts of murdered kings and queens; but the slight descriptions she had heard produced no prevision of the reality as compared with what she really wanted and was sure that she should find.

She thought of Gianluca, as the carriage rolled along through the lower hills, and she looked forward with pleasure to writing about what she saw and expected to see. It seemed probable that she would write even longer letters to him, now that she was to be quite alone, and she hoped that his would be as interesting as ever. She thought again with anger of Taquisara's extraordinary conduct, for she was positively sure that she was not playing with his friend in any sense of the word. The very suggestion would have been insulting, if he had made it in the most carefully guarded and tactful language. As he had put it, it had been nothing short of outrageous.

Gianluca must be blind indeed, she assured herself, if he fancied that she meant more than friendship by the constant exchange of letters with him. It might be eccentric; it might be looked upon as utterly and unpardonably unconventional, but it could never be regarded as a flirtation by letter. The proof of that, Veronica argued to herself, was that both of them knew that it was nothing of the sort, a manner of begging the question familiar to those who wish to do as they please without hindrance from within or without.



CHAPTER XIX.

The roads were good, for it was the month of May. In winter, even Veronica's strong horses could hardly have dragged the light carriage to its destination in one day. It was but little after ten o'clock in the morning when Veronica got out upon the platform of the railway station at Eboli; it was sunset, and the full moon was rising, when her carriage stopped at the entrance of the mountain town.

It had been a very long day, and she had seen much that was quite new to her, and different from what she had expected. At first, indeed, she was amazed at the richness of the country beyond Eboli, as she was driven for nearly an hour through what was literally a forest of ancient olive trees, interrupted only here and there by a broad field of vines, cut low and trained upon short stakes; and from the rising ground beyond Carpella, where the road winds up the first hill, she looked back and saw the shimmering grey-green light of the olive leaves, lying like a delicate mantle over the flat country and in the great hollow, from Eboli to the deep gorge wherein the ancient city of Campania lies as in a nest. A part of the olive land was hers; and as she drove along, the midday breeze blew some of the tiny, star-like olive blossoms into her lap. She took one in her fingers and looked at it closely and could just smell its very faint, aromatic odour.

"It is the first greeting from what is yours," said Don Teodoro, with a smile.

"The wind brings me my own flowers," answered Veronica, and she laughed softly and happily.

Up steep hills and down into deep valleys, across high, arched stone bridges, beneath which the water of the Sele was streaming fast and clear amid white limestone boulders and over broad reaches of white pebbles that were dazzling in the sun—and the olive trees were left behind, and here and there were patches of big timber, oaks to which the old, brown leaves still clung in the spring, and many poplars straight and feathery with leaves but yet half grown. But the land was by degrees less rich and less cultivated, till gradually it changed to a rough and stony country, and even from far off Veronica could see the little flocks of sheep dark brown and white, and small herds of cloud-grey cattle, pasturing and moving slowly on the hillsides above and below the winding road.

She looked at the shepherds when they were near enough for her to see them. As she had left Eboli, she had seen one, driving a flock of sheep along the high road, and she had wondered whether there were many of his kind. He was a magnificently handsome young fellow of two or three and twenty, dressed in loose brown velveteens, with a belted jacket and a spotless shirt, strong, well-made shoes, leathern gaiters, and a flat cap, and he carried the traditional hatchet of the southern shepherd. He strode along with a light and easy gait, and looked more like a young gentleman in a rather eccentric but well-made shooting-dress, than like a herdsman. But he was from Eboli itself, and a native would have told her that the people of Eboli were "exceedingly fanatic about dress." The men and the clothes she now saw were very different; tall, grim figures in vast and often ragged brown cloaks that reached almost to their feet; small, battered, pointed hats; rough, muddy hose that should have once been white; shoes that loaded their steps like lead; and they moved slowly, with bent heads, rough, long-unshaven faces, eyes too hollow, horny hands too lean—wild, half-fed creatures, worse off than the flocks they drove, by all the degrees of the inverse ratio between man, who needs man's help, and beast, that needs only nature.

There was that same grimness—there is no other word—in the faces of almost all the people Veronica now met, as the road wound higher and then descended through Oliveto, the first of the mountain villages. There was in them all the look of men and women who know that the struggle is hopeless, but who will not, or cannot, die and be at rest. There was the expression of those who will no longer make any effort except for the bare, hard bread that keeps them above ground, and who, having toiled through the terrible daylight that is their cruel task-master, lie down as they are, when work is done, to forget daylight and life if they can, in a mercifully heavy sleep. But before their bones are half rested, the pitiless day is upon them, and drives them out to labour again till they are stupid with weariness and only not faint enough to faint and forget.

The people sometimes stood still and stared at the young princess as she drove by, with the old priest beside her. But the majority went on, indifferent and far beyond anything like interest or curiosity. Only the shepherds' great cur dogs, of all breeds and colours, but always big and fierce, barked furiously at the carriage and plunged furiously after it, pulling up suddenly and turning back with a growl when they had followed it for half a minute. The women, in ragged black or dark, checked skirts, with torn red woollen shawls hanging from their heads, glanced sidelong at Veronica, when they were still young; but the older ones went by without giving her a look, their leathern, Sibylline faces set, their old lids wrinkled by everlasting effort till they almost hid the small dark eyes. The most of them carried something in their hands,—faggots, covered baskets, small sacks of potatoes, or corn, or beans; and when the load was heavy they walked with a sharp, jerking turn of the hips to right and left that was almost like a dislocation, and the wrinkles in the faces of these heavy-laden ones were deep folds, as in the hide of a loose-skinned beast. For in that country to be strong is to be cursed; it means double work and double burden, where everything that breathes and moves and can be found to labour is driven to the very breaking point of strain.

But as Veronica drove on, there were fewer men and women in the road, and only once in an hour or so, a huge cart, piled up with wine barrels, lumbered along, drawn by four or five deathly-looking mules that stumbled when they had to stop or start—shadowy creatures, the ghosts of their kind, as it were.

The villages were worse than the open country, for in them the appalling poverty was gathered together in its muddiest colours and set in fixed pictures which Veronica never forgot. In the May weather, the doors of low dwellings were open, and the black and white pigs wandered unhindered from the filthy street without to the misery within, fattening on the poor waste of the desperately poor, fattening in the sun that drove their wretched betters to the daily fight with starvation, fattening in the vile filth to which starvation was dully indifferent, since cleanliness meant labour that brought no bread.

To the right and left the barren mountains reared their enormous baldness to the sun, deserts raised up broadside, as it were, and set on end, that their bareness might be the better seen and known to the world around. Here and there, from their bases, dark wooded spurs ran out across the rising valley, and the road wound round them, in and out, and up and down, and over stone bridges big and little, and then up in terribly steep ascent, southeastwards to high Laviano, looking towards the pass by which the highway leads from Ciliento to Basilicata.

In Laviano, facing the wretched houses, stood the grand beginning of a wretchedly unfinished building, one of those utter failures of great hopes, which trace the track of invading liberty through the south. It came, it saw, and it began many things—but it did not conquer and it completed very little. In the first wild enthusiasm of the Garibaldian revolution, even poor, hill-perched, filth-stricken, pig-breeding Laviano was to be a city, and forthwith, in the general stye, the walls of a great municipal building, from which lofty destinies were to be guided and controlled in the path to greatness, began to rise, with strength of stone masonry, and arches of well-hewn basalt, and divisions within for halls and stairways, and many offices. But the beams of the first story were never laid across the lower walls. There was no more money, and what had been built was a palace for the pigs. Laviano had spent its little all, and gone into debt, to be great, and had failed; and though the people had earned some of their own money back as wages in the building, more than half of it slipped into the pockets of architects, who went away smiling, jeering, and happy, to prey upon the next foolish village that would be great and could not. And above, from a hill on the mountain's spur outside the village, still frowned intact the heavy four-towered castle, complete and sound as when it had been built, the lasting monument of those hard warriors of a sterner time, who could not only take, but hold—and they held long and cruelly.

Veronica looked up backwards at the towers, as the horses stood a while to breathe after the steep ascent, and she asked Don Teodoro to whom the castle belonged.

"It is yours," he answered. "The castle is yours, the village is yours, the hills are yours. Your steward lives in the castle. You have much property here, more miles of good and bad land than I can tell."

"And is it all like this? Are the people all like these?"

"No. There are poorer people in the hills."

The happy laugh that had come when the wind had blown the olive blossoms of Eboli upon her lap had long been silent now. Her face was grave and sorrowful, and she drew in her lips as though something hurt her. Some half-naked children stood shyly watching her from a little distance. Pigs grunted and rubbed themselves against the wheels of the carriage, and the coachman lashed backwards at them with his whip. But the cruel day was not yet over, and the people had not come back from their toil, so that the place was almost deserted still. There was an evil smell in the air, and the children's faces were pale and swollen and dirty.

Veronica wondered how any people could be poorer than these, and her face grew still more sad. She tried to speak to the children, but they could not understand her. She got some little coins from her purse, but they were too much frightened to come forward and take them. They were not afraid of the priest, however, and Don Teodoro got out of the carriage and put the money into their horrible little hands, and they ran away with strange small cries and wild, half-noiseless laughter—if laughter can be anything but noisy. Let such words pass as come; for no words of our tongue can quite tell all Veronica saw and heard on that day. The great Italian myth survives in foreign nations; it has even more life, perhaps, in Italy itself, north of the Roman line; but only those know what Italy is, who have trudged on foot, and ridden by mountain paths, and driven by southern highways, through hill and valley and mountain and plain, from house to house, where there are neither inns nor taverns, throughout that vast region which is the half of the whole country, or more, and where the abomination of desolation reigns supreme in broad day.

That Italy has done what she has done in thirty years, to be a power among nations, is a marvel, a wonder, and almost a miracle. That she should have done it at all, is the greatest mistake ever committed by a civilized nation, and it is irrevocable, as its results are to be fatal and lasting. But upon the good reality of unity, the deadly dream of military greatness descended as a killing blight, and the evil vision of political power has blasted the common sense of a whole people. It is one thing to be one, as a united family, each working for the good of each and all; it is another thing, and a worse thing, to be one as a vast and idle army, sitting down to besiege its own storehouses, each eating something of the whole and doing nothing to increase that whole, till all is gone, and the vision fades in the awakening from the dream, leaving the bare nakedness of desolation to tell the story of a huge mistake.

Even Veronica's strong horses were well nigh tired out when they reached the dismal solitude of the high pass above Laviano; and she herself was wearied and faint with the gloom, and the poverty, and the barrenness of so much that was hers. But her mouth was set and firm, and she meant that something should be done before many days, which should begin a vast and lasting change. She did not know what she was undertaking, nor how far she might be led in the attempt to do good against great odds of evil on all sides; but she was not discouraged, and she had no intention of drawing back.

It was a very long day. As the hours wore on, the three ate something from time to time, from a basket of provisions which Elettra had brought, and at which Veronica had laughed. But the air of the mountains was keen, and there was not too much in the basket, after all.

Then, in the shadow below the sun-line cut by the mountains across the earth, she saw a sharp peak, grey and regular as a pyramid, rising in the midst of the high valley, and then beyond it, as the carriage rolled along, there was a misty landscape of a far, low valley—and then, all at once, the brown, tiled roofs of her own Muro were at her feet, and far to the left, out of the houses, rose the round grey keep of the fortress. The setting sun was behind the mountains, and the moon, near to the full, hung, round and white, just above the tower, in the pale eastern sky. From the second turning of the steep descent, Veronica could see a huge bastion of the castle above the roofs, jutting out like an independent round fort.

Many of the people knew that she was coming, and some had hastened from their work to see her as soon as she arrived. Curious, silent, pale, dirty, they thronged about the carriage. An old woman touched Veronica's skirt, and then brought her hand back to her lips and kissed it. Then another did the same—a thin, dark-browed girl with a ragged red shawl on her head. The uncouth men stood shoulder to shoulder, staring with unwinking eyes. A tall, pale shepherd youth was erect and motionless in a tattered hat and a brown cloak, overtopping the others by his head and thin throat, and there was something Sphinx-like in the expression of his still, sad face.

On Veronica's right, as the carriage halted, was the public fountain. Twenty or thirty tall, thin girls in short black frocks, displaying grimy stockings and coarse shoes, or bare legs and muddy red feet, were waiting their turns to fill the long wooden casks they carried on their heads. The fountain had but two little streams of water, and it took a long time to fill a cask. At the sound of the carriage wheels, most of the girls turned slowly round to see the sight, their empty barrels balanced cross-wise on their heads. They did not even lift a hand to steady their burdens as they changed their positions. They stared steadily. Veronica looked to the right and left and tried to smile, to show that she was pleased. But the visible, jagged edges of their outward misery cut cruelly at her heart, for they were her people; nominally, by old feudal right, they were all her people, and her father's father had held right of justice and of life and death over them all; and in actual fact they were almost all her people, since they lived in her houses, worked on her lands, and ate a portion of her bread, though it was such a very little one as could barely keep them alive.

She tried to smile, and some of the girls held out their fingers towards her and then kissed them, as though they had touched her dress, as the old woman had done. But the men stared stolidly from under the low brims of their battered hats. Only the fever-struck shepherd smiled in a sickly way and lost his Sphinx-like look all at once.

A man in a white shirt came forward, leading Veronica's mare, all saddled for her to mount.

"The carriage cannot go through the streets," said Don Teodoro, in explanation. "They are too narrow and too rough."

"No," answered Veronica, as she stepped from the carriage upon the muddy stones. "I will walk. If the streets are good enough for my people, they are good enough for me."

Even to the good priest this seemed a little exaggeration on her part. But she had seen much that day of which she had never dreamed, and in her generous heart there was a sort of fierce wrath against so much misery, with a strong impulse to share it or cure it, to face the devil on his own ground, and beat him to death, hand to hand. It was perhaps foolish of her to walk to her own gate, but there was nothing to be ashamed of in the feeling which prompted her to do it.

Don Teodoro walked beside her on the left, and Elettra pressed close to her on the right, as they threaded the foul black lanes towards the castle. The moment she had left the carriage, men and women and children had seized eagerly upon her belongings, to carry the bags and rugs and little packages, and now they followed her in a compact crowd, all talking together in harsh undertones; and from the dark doorways, as she went by, old women and old men came out, and more children, half clothed in rags, and cripples four or five. The pigs that were out in the lanes were caught in the press and struggled desperately to get out of it, upsetting even strong men with their heavy bodies as they charged through the crowd, grunting and squealing. A few people coming from the opposite direction, too, flattened themselves against the black walls and low, greasy doors, but there was not room even there, and they also were taken up by the throng and driven before, till the small crowd grew to a little multitude of miserable, curious, hungry, scrambling humanity, squeezing along the narrow way to get sight of the lady before she should reach the castle gate.

From time to time the tall old priest turned mildly and protested, trying to get more air and elbow room for Veronica.

"Gently, gently, my children!" he called to them. "You will see your princess often, for she is come to stay with you."

"Eh, uncle priest!" cried a rough young voice. "That is fair and good, but who believes it?"

"Eh, who believes it?" echoed a dozen voices, young and old.

Veronica laid her hand upon Don Teodoro's arm to steady herself as she trod upon the slimy stones. She could not have stopped, for the crowd, extending far behind her in the dim street, would have pushed her down, but she turned her head as she walked and spoke in the direction of the people. Her voice rang high and clear over their heads.

"I have come to live with you," she said, and they heard her even far off. "It is true. You shall see."

"God render it you!" said a woman's voice. "May God make it true!"

"More than one of them are saying that to themselves," observed Don Teodoro, as Veronica looked before her again, and walked on.

Suddenly she came out upon a broader, cleaner way, which led out beyond the houses and up, by a sweep, to the low gate of the castle; close before her was the great lower bastion which she had seen from a distance. She saw now that there was a trellis high up, all over it, on which grew a vine; but the leaves were scarcely budding yet. She had not time to see much, for the crowd would not let her stop, and as the way widened, many ran before her, up to the gate, where they stopped short, for there were half a dozen men there in dark green coats, and silver buttons, foresters of the estate, who kept them back.

Veronica would have turned once more, to nod to the people and smile at the poor women who pressed close upon her, but the crowd was so great that as the foresters made way for her, she found herself driven almost violently into her own gate, and in the rush, Elettra nearly fell to her knees as they got in. The gate clanged behind her, and she heard the great bolts sliding into their sockets, as it was made fast. Her men had known well enough what to expect from the curiosity of the people. They opened a little postern and let in the few who carried her things, and who had been shut out with the crowd.

She drew a long breath and looked upward, before her. It was very unlike what she had expected. She was in the dark, vaulted way, scarcely eight feet broad, and paved with flagstones, which led up to the first small court. The masonry was rough, enormous, damp, and blackened with dampness and age. From the building around the little enclosure small, dark windows looked down upon her. A narrow door was on her right. On the left, rough stone steps led up to the keep, and to the eastern side of the castle. The door stood open, and there was a lamp in the small entry. Before entering, she glanced up at the lintel and saw that the ancient arms of the Serra were roughly sculptured in the old marble, and she knew that she was on the threshold of her home.

It was more like a gloomy dungeon than the princely castle of which she had dreamed. That, indeed, was what it had been through many ages, and nothing else. She wondered where the great staircase could be where the poor ghost of Queen Joanna sat and shrieked at midnight on the twelfth of May. It was near the day, and not being at all timid, she smiled at the thought, as she went in. Three or four decently clad women in black came forward into the vaulted passage, and smiled and nodded awkwardly. They were the people Don Teodoro had engaged for her service. She had a word for each and patted them on the shoulder, and they led the way, two and two, carrying a light between them, for it was very dark within, though there was still broad daylight without.

Then, all at once, she scarcely knew how, Veronica was standing upon a little balcony. Behind her, the walls of the embrasure were fully fifteen feet thick. Before her, under the glow of the sunset on the one hand, and the first pale moonlight on the other, lay a great valley, deep and long and broadening fan-like from below her to the far distance, where the evening mists were beginning to gather the white light of the moon, while the great mountains of the southeast were still red with the last blood of the dying day—a view of matchless peace and surpassing beauty, such as she had never yet seen. Just then, she looked down, and there, at her feet, were the brown roofs of Muro. Her dream seemed to be suddenly realized, and she had found the room of which she had so often made the picture in her imagination. But it was far more beautiful than she had dared to imagine or dream. The lofty fortress was built lengthwise along the rock, facing the southwest, to meet the winter sun from morning till night; and forever before it lay the wide Basilicata, the peace of the valley, the height of the huge mountains, the infinite tenderness of a distance that is seen from a vast height—in which even what would be near in one plane, is already far by depth.

Veronica looked out in silence for a long time, and the day faded at last in the sky, while the moon's light whitened and strewed blackness across the twilight shadows. The old priest stood beside her, his three-cornered hat in his hand. But the silver spectacles had disappeared. He could feel what was before him without seeing it distinctly.

"I knew that I should find it," said Veronica, at last. "I always knew that it was here. I shall live in this room."

"It is a good room," said Don Teodoro, quietly, and not at all understanding what she meant.

"And I have an idea that I shall die in this room," added the young girl, in a dreamy tone, not caring whether he heard or not. "I am the last of them, you know. They all came from here in the beginning, ever so long ago. It would be natural that the last of them should die here."

"For Heaven's sake, let us not talk of such sad things!" cried the priest, protesting against the mere mention of death, as almost every Italian will.

"Have they made it a sitting-room?" asked Veronica, turning from the balcony into the deep embrasure.

She had scarcely glanced at the furniture, for she had made straight for the window on entering. She looked about her now. There were dark tapestries on the walls. There was a big polished table in the middle, and a dozen or more carved chairs, covered with faded brocade, were arranged in regular order on the three sides away from the windows. The high vault was roughly painted in fresco, with cherubs and garlands of flowers in the barbarous manner of Italian art fifty years ago. There was a low marble mantelpiece, and on it stood six brass candlesticks at precisely even distances, one from another, the six candles being all lighted. But there was a lamp on the table. Veronica smiled.

"You must forgive me if I have not known what to do," said Don Teodoro, humbly, but smiling also. "I have seen something of civilization in my wanderings, but I never attempted to arrange a house before. This is a very large house, if one calls such a place a house at all."

"I suppose there are thirty or forty rooms?"

"There are three hundred and sixty-five altogether," answered the priest, his smile broadening. "They are all named in the inventory. There is a legend about the place to the effect that there is a three hundred and sixty-sixth, which no one can find. Of course the inventory includes every roofed space between walls, from the dungeon at the top of the keep to the dark room under the trap-door in the last hall on this lower story. But you will be surprised, to-morrow, if you go over the place. It is much bigger than seems possible, because you can never really see it from outside unless you go down into the plain."

"And where do you think that other room is?" asked Veronica, who was young enough to take interest in the mystery.

"Heaven knows! Perhaps it does not exist at all. But as I was saying, my dear princess, I found it hard to arrange an apartment for you, not knowing how you might choose to select your quarters. So I had the tapestries cleaned and hung up, and the chairs dusted and the tables polished, and some lights got ready on this floor, and your bedroom is the last."

"The one with the trap-door?" asked Veronica. "That is very amusing!"

"I had the dark room below well cleaned, and the trap has been screwed down," said Don Teodoro. "I thought that there might be rats there. Elettra has the room before yours. But you are tired, and you must be hungry. It is my fault for not leaving you at once."

"But you will dine with me? To-night and every night, Don Teodoro—that is understood."

Half an hour later, they sat down to table in the light of the lamp and the six candles, in the room from which Veronica had looked out upon the valley. But they were both too tired to talk, though they made faint attempts at conversation, and as soon as the meal was over, the old priest begged leave to go home.

"Do not be afraid," he said, as he bade Veronica good night. "There are several men in the house. You are not all alone with your five women. The foresters have their headquarters here."

Veronica was anything but timid or nervous, but when she was in bed in her own room at the south corner of the castle, watching the shadows cast up by the flickering night light upon the ancient tapestries, she realized that she was very lonely indeed, she and scarcely a dozen servants, in the vast fortress wherein a thousand men had once found ample room to live. Brave as she was, she glanced once or twice at the corner of the room where the trap-door was placed. There was a carpet over it, and a table stood there which Elettra had arranged hastily for the toilet table. Veronica wondered what end that dark place below had served in ancient days, and whether she were not perhaps lying in the very room in which Queen Joanna had been smothered by the two Hungarian soldiers. It seemed probable.

But she was very tired, and she fell asleep before long, fancying that she was looking out from the balcony again, with the brown roofs of her people's houses at her feet.



CHAPTER XX.

Veronica was awake early in the May morning, and looked out again upon the great valley she had seen at sunset. It was all mist and light, without distinct outline. A fresh breeze blew into her face as she stood at the open window, and the sun was yet on the southeast wall, so that she stood in the clear, bluish shadow which high buildings cast only in the morning.

She had slept soundly without dreams, and she wondered how she could have ever glanced last night towards the place in the corner where the trap-door was hidden under her toilet table, or how she could have felt herself lonely and not quite safe, in her own castle, with a dozen of her own people, when she had never been afraid in the Palazzo Macomer. She pushed back her brown hair, a little impatiently, and laughed as she turned to Elettra.

"We are well here, Excellency," said the maid, with a smile of satisfaction.

She rarely spoke unless Veronica addressed her, and was never a woman of many words.

"And you saw no ghosts?" Veronica laughed.

"I am afraid of ghosts that wear felt slippers," answered Elettra.

An hour later Veronica sent for Don Teodoro, and they went over the castle together. He led her first to the high dungeon on the north side. The natural rock sprang up at that end, and some of the steps were cut in it. At the top, the tower was round, with a high parapet, and an extension on one side, all filled with earth and planted with cabbages and other green things.

"The under-steward had a little vegetable garden here," said Don Teodoro. "I suppose that you will plant flowers. Will you look over the parapet on that side?"

Veronica trod the soft earth daintily and reached the wall. She glanced over it, and then drew a deep breath of surprise. Below her was a sheer fall of a thousand feet, to the bottom of a desolate ravine that ran up to northward in an incredibly steep ascent.

Then they went into the ancient prison, which was a round, vaulted chamber, shaped like the inside of the sharp end of an eggshell, with one small grated window, three times a man's height from the stone floor. The little iron door had huge bolts and locks, and might have been four or five hundred years old. On the stone walls, men who had been imprisoned there had chipped out little crosses, and made initials, and rough dates in the fruitless attempts to commemorate their obscure suffering.

Veronica and Don Teodoro descended again, and he led her through many strange places, dimly lighted by small windows piercing ten feet of masonry, and through the enormous hall which had been the guard-room or barrack in old days, and had served as a granary since then, and up and down dark stairs, through narrow ways, out upon jutting bastions, down and up, backwards and forwards, as it seemed to her, till she could only guess at the direction in which she was going, by the glimpses of distant mountain and valley as she passed the irregularly placed windows. Several of her people followed her, and one went before with a huge bunch of ancient keys, opening and shutting all manner of big and little doors before her and after her. Now and then one of the men in green coats lighted a lantern and showed her where steep black steps led down into dark cellars, and vaults, and underground places.

She saw it all, but she was glad to get back to the room she already loved best, from which the balcony outside the windows looked down upon the valley.

And there she began at once to install herself, causing her books to be unpacked and arranged, as well as the few objects familiar to her eyes, which she had brought with her. Among these was the photograph of Bosio Macomer. Those of Gregorio and Matilde had disappeared. She hesitated, as she held the picture in her hand, as to whether she should keep it in her bedroom, or in the sitting-room, in which she meant chiefly to live, and she looked at it with sad eyes. She decided that it should be in the sitting-room. Where everything was hers, she had a right to show what had been all but quite hers at the last. The six brass candlesticks were taken away, and Bosio's photograph was set upon the long, low mantelpiece. His death had after all been more a surprise, a horror, a disappointment, than the wound it might have been if she had really loved him, and it is only the wound that leaves a scar. The momentary shock is presently forgotten when the young nerves are rested and the vision of a great moment fades to the half-tone of the general past. Between her present, too, and the night of Bosio's death, had come the attempt upon her own life, and all the sudden change that had followed the catastrophe. She was too brave to realize, even now, that she might have died at Matilde's hands. She had to go over the facts to make herself believe that she had been almost killed. But the whole affair had brought a revolution into her life, since Bosio had been gone.

Another companionship had taken the place of his, so that she hardly missed him now. She would miss Gianluca's letters far more than Bosio, if they should suddenly stop, and the mere thought that the correspondence might be broken off gave her a sharp little pain. The idea crossed her mind while she was arranging her writing-table near her favourite window, for all writing seemed to be connected with Gianluca, so that she could not imagine passing more than a day or two without setting down something on paper which he was to read, and to answer. To lose that close intimacy of thought would be to lose much.

But Gianluca had written on the morning of her departure, and before Veronica had half finished what she was doing, one of her women brought her his letter, for the post came in at about midday. It came alone, for Bianca had not written yet, and Veronica's correspondence was not large. She had not even thought of ordering a newspaper to be sent to her. Her work and occupation were to be in Muro, and she cared very little about what might happen anywhere else. She broke the seal and read the letter eagerly.

It was like most of his letters at first, being full of matters about which he had talked with her, and written in the graceful way which was especially his and which had so much charm for her. But towards the end his courage must have failed him a little, for there were sad words and one or two phrases that had in them something touching and tender to which she was not accustomed. He did not tell her that he was ill and that he feared lest he might never see her again, for he was far too careful as yet of hinting at the truth she would not understand. They were very little things that told her of his sadness—an unfinished sentence ending in a dash, the fall of half a dozen harmonious words that were like a beautiful verse and vaguely reminded her of Leopardi's poetry—small touches here and there which had either never slipped from his pen before, or which she had never noticed.

They pleased her. She would not have been a human woman if she had not been a little glad to be missed for herself, even though the writing was to continue. She read the last part of the letter over three times, the rest only twice, and then she laid it in an empty drawer of her table, rather tenderly, to be the first of many. That should be Gianluca's especial place.

Amidst her first arrangements for her own comfort, she did not forget what she looked upon as her chief work, and before that day was over she had begun what was to be a systematic improvement of Muro. Direct and practical, with a sense beyond her years, she did not hesitate. The first step was to clean the little town and pave the streets. The next to visit and examine the dwellings.

"The place shall be clean," said Veronica to the steward, who stood before her table, receiving her orders.

"But, Excellency, how can it be clean when there are pigs everywhere?" inquired the man, astonished at her audacity.

"There shall be no more pigs in Muro," answered the young princess. "The people shall choose as many trustworthy old men and boys as are necessary to look after the creatures. They shall be kept at night in some barn or old building a mile or two from here, and they shall be fed there, or pastured there. I will pay what it costs."

"Excellency, it is impossible! There will be a revolution!" The steward held up his hands in amazement.

"Very well, then. Let us have a revolution. But do not tell me that what I order is impossible. I will have no impossibilities. The town belongs to me, and it shall be inhabited by human beings, and not by pigs. If you make difficulties, you may go. I can find people to carry out my orders. Begin and clean the streets to-day. Take as many hands as you need and pay them full labourer's wages, but see that they work. Make a list of the pigs and their owners. Decide where you will keep them. Hire the swineherds. If I find one pig in Muro a week from to-day, and if, in fine weather, I cannot walk dry shod where I please, I will take another steward. I intend to remit a quarter of all the rents this year. You may tell the people so. You may go and see about these things at once, but let me hear no more of impossibilities. Only children say that things are impossible."

The man understood that the old order had departed and that Veronica Serra meant to be obeyed without question, and he never again raised his voice to suggest that there might be what he called a revolution if her orders were carried out.

As for the people of Muro, they were dumb with astonishment. They had a municipality, of course, a syndic, and a secretary, and certain head men, to whose authority they were accustomed to appeal in everything—generally against the extortion of the stewards who had obeyed Gregorio Macomer. But before Veronica had been in Muro ten days, the municipality was nothing more than the shadow of a name. The syndic was her tenant, and bowed down to her, and the rest of the illiterate officials followed his lead. It was natural enough; for they all benefited by the lowering of the rents, and they were quick to see that she meant to spend money in the place, which would be to the advantage of every one before long.

It was she who made the revolution, and not they. Before the first week was out the pigs were gone, and she walked dry shod over the stones from the castle to the entrance of the village. In less than a month the principal way was levelled and half paved, and masons were everywhere at work repairing those of the houses which were in most immediate need of improvement.

"You are Christians," she said to a little crowd that gathered round her one day, while she was watching the setting-up of a new door. "You shall live like Christians. When you have been clean for a month, you will never wish to be dirty again."

"That is true," answered an old man, shaking his head thoughtfully. "But, in the name of God, who has ever thought of these things? It needed this angel from Paradise."

Veronica laughed. They were docile people, and they soon found out that the young princess was as absolute a despot in character as ever terrorized Rome or ruled the Russias. At the merest suggestion of opposition, the small aquiline nose seemed to quiver, the little head was thrown back, the brown eyes gleamed, the delicate gloved hand either closed upon itself quickly or went out in a gesture of command.

But then, they sometimes saw another look in her face, though not often, and perhaps it was less natural to her though not less true to her nature. They had seen the brown eyes soften wonderfully and the small hands do very tender things, now and then, for poor children and suffering women when, no one else was at hand to give aid. Yet, at most times, she was quiet, cheerful, natural, for it happened more and more rarely that any one opposed her will.

She became to them the very incarnation of power on earth. She would have been thought rich in any country; to their utter wretchedness her wealth was fabulous beyond bounds of fairy tale. Most persons would have admitted that she was wonderfully practical and showed a great deal of common sense in what she did; to her own people she seemed preternaturally wise, only to be compared with Providence for her foresight, and much more occupied with their especial welfare than Providence could be expected to be, considering the extent of the world. She was endlessly charitable to women and children and old men, but to those who could work she was inexorable. She paid well, but she insisted that the work should be done honestly. Some of the younger ones murmured at her hardness when they had tried to deceive her.

"Would you take false money from me?" she asked. "Why should I take false work from you? You have good work to sell, and I have good money to give you for it. I do not cheat you. Do not try to cheat me."

They laughed shamefacedly and worked better the next time, for they were not without common sense, either. Doubtless, she attempted and expected more than was possible at first, but she had Don Teodoro at her elbow, and he was able to direct her energy, though he could not have moderated it. He found it hard, indeed, to keep pace with her swift advances towards the civilization of Muro, and he was quite incapable of entering into the boldness of some of her generalizations, which, to tell the truth, were youthful enough when she first expressed her ideas to him. But while one of his two great passions was learning, the other was charity, in that simple form which gives all it has to any one who seems to be in trouble—the charity that is universal, and easily imposed upon, and that exists spontaneously and, as it were, for its own sake, in certain warm-hearted people—an indiscriminate love of giving to the poor, the overflow of a heart so full of kindness that it would be kind to a withering flower or a half-dead tree, rather than not expend itself at all. And so, seeing the great things that were done by Veronica in Muro, and secretly giving of his very little where she gave very much, Don Teodoro grew daily to be more and more happy in the satisfaction of his strongest instinct; and little by little he, also, came to look upon his princess as the incarnation of a good power come to illuminate his darkness and to lift his people out of degradation to human estate.

Veronica was happy too. There is a sort of exhilaration and daily surprise in the first use of real power in any degree, and she enjoyed her own sensations to the fullest extent. When she was alone, she wrote about them to Gianluca, giving him what was almost a daily chronicle of her new life, and waiting anxiously for the answers to her letters which came with almost perfect regularity for some time after her own arrival at Muro.

They pleased her, too, though the note of sadness was more accentuated in them, as time went on and spring ran into summer. He had hoped, perhaps, that she might tire of her solitude and come down to Naples, if only for a few days; or at least, that something might happen to break what promised to be a long separation. He longed for a sight of her, and said so now and then, for letter-writing could not fill up the aching emptiness she had left in his already empty life. He had not her occupations and interests to absorb his days and make each hour seem too short, and, moreover, he loved her, whereas she was not at all in love with him.

Then, a little later, there was a tone of complaint in what he wrote, which suddenly irritated her. He told her that his life was dreary and tiresome, and that the people about him did not understand him. She answered that he should occupy himself, that he should find something to do and do it, and that she herself never had time enough in the day for all she undertook. It was the sort of letter which a very young woman will sometimes write to a man whose existence she does not understand, a little patronizing in tone and superior with the self-assurance of successful and unfeeling youth. She even pointed out to him that there were several things which he did not know, but which he might learn if he chose, all of which was undoubtedly true, though it was not at all what he wanted. For him, however, the whole letter was redeemed by a chance phrase at the end of it. She carelessly wrote that she wished he were at Muro to see what she had done in a short time. He knew that the words meant nothing, but he lived on them for a time, because she had written them to him. His next letter was more cheerful. He repeated her own words, as though wishing her to see how much he valued them, saying that he wished indeed that he were at Muro, to see what she had accomplished. To some extent, he added, the fulfilment of the wish only depended on herself, for in the following week he was going with his father and mother and all the family to spend a month in a place they had not far from Avellino, and that, as she knew, was not at an impossible distance from Muro. But of course he could not intrude alone upon her solitude.

When she next wrote, Veronica made no reference to this hint of his. The man was not the same person to her as the correspondent, and she very much preferred exchanging letters with him to any conversation. She did not forget what he had said, however, and when she supposed that the Della Spina family had gone to the country she addressed her letters to him near Avellino. He had not yet gone, however, and he soon wrote from Naples complaining that he had no news from her.

On the following day Veronica was surprised to receive a letter addressed in a hand she did not know. It was from Taquisara, and she frowned a little angrily as she glanced at the signature before reading the contents. It began in the formal Italian manner,—"Most gentle Princess,"—and it ended with an equally formal assurance of respectful devotion. But the matter of the letter showed little formality.

"I have hesitated long before writing to you"—it said—"both because I offended you at our last meeting and because I have not been sure, until to-day, about the principal matter of which I have to speak. In the first place, I beg you to forgive me for having spoken to you as I did at the Princess Corleone's house. I am not skilful at saying disagreeable things gracefully. I was in earnest, and I meant what I said, but I am sincerely sorry that I should have said it rudely. I earnestly beg you to pardon the form which my intention took.

"Secondly, I wish very much that I might see you. I fear that you would not receive me, and from the ordinary point of view of society you would be acting quite rightly, since you are really living alone. The world, however, is quite sure that you have a companion, an elderly gentlewoman who is a distant relation of yours. It will never be persuaded that this good lady does not exist, because it cannot possibly believe that you would have the audacity to live alone in your own house.

"I wish to see you, because my friend Gianluca cannot live much longer. You may remember that he walked with difficulty, and even used a stick, before you left Naples. He can now hardly walk at all. According to the doctors, he has a mortal disease of the spine and cannot live more than two or three months. Perhaps I am telling you this very roughly, but it cannot pain you as much as it does me, and you ought to know it. He is not the man to let any one tell you of his state, and I have taken it upon myself to write to you without asking his opinion. I told you once what you were to him. All that I told you is ten times more true, now. Between you and life, he would not choose, if he could; but he is losing both. As a Christian woman, in commonest kindness, if you can see him before he dies, do so. And you can, if you will. He was to have been moved to the place near Avellino a few days ago, but he was too ill. They all leave next week, unless he should be worse. You are strong and well, and it would not be much for you to make that short journey, considering Gianluca's condition.

"I shall not tell him that I have written to you, and I leave to you to let him know of my writing, or not, as you think fit."

Here followed the little final phrase and the signature. Veronica let the sheet fall upon her table, and gazed long and steadily at the tapestry on the wall opposite her. Her hands clasped each other suddenly and then fell apart loosely and lay idle before her. Her head sank forward a little, but her eyes still held the point on which they were looking.

In the first shock of knowing that Gianluca was to die, she felt as though she had lost a part of him already, and something she dearly valued seemed to go out of her life. Her instinct was not to go to him and see him while she could, but to look forward to the blankness that would be before her when he should be gone. Something of him was an integral part of her life. But there was something of him for which she felt that she hardly cared at all.