glanced at him, half startled. His tone and manner were quite different from anything she had hitherto heard and seen. She saw that he was not looking at her, and her eyes went back to the roots of the trees.
"Yes," she said, almost inaudibly, for she did not know whether he expected her to say anything.
"I have a very good friend, Donna Veronica," he continued; "I have been with him this morning. You have heard his name often of late, I think, and you know him—Gianluca della Spina."
Veronica started a little, and again the colour came and went in her delicate face.
"Yes," she said. "I—I know him a little."
"He loves you, Donna Veronica," Taquisara said, his voice softening almost to a whisper, for he did not wish Bianca Corleone to hear him. "He loves you so much that he is almost dangerously ill—indeed, I think it is dangerous—because you will not marry him."
He paused to see what she would do. She quickly turned her startled eyes to him, and her lips parted, but she said nothing. He raised his face and met her look as he went on.
"Last night, his father was at your house, and he was told that there was no hope, because you were betrothed to Count Bosio Macomer."
"They told him that?" asked Veronica, quickly, and the colour mounted a third time in her cheeks. "But it is not true!" she added; and her eyes set themselves sharply, for she was angry.
"No," said Taquisara, "I know that it is not quite true, for I have been to see Count Bosio. I was there half an hour ago."
"You have quarrelled?" asked Veronica, in sudden anxiety.
"Quarrelled? no. Why should we quarrel? He gave me to understand that nothing was settled. I thanked him, and came away. I did not hope to see you; but I knew that the Princess Corleone was your best friend, as I am Gianluca's. I thought I would speak to her. Since, by a miracle, we have met, I have spoken directly to you. Do you forgive me? I hope so, though I daresay that no mere acquaintance has ever talked as I am talking. If you blame me, remember that it is for Gianluca, that he is my friend, that he knows nothing of my speaking to you, since you and I have met by chance, and that he is perhaps dying—dying for you, Donna Veronica."
The girl's face was white and grave now, for Taquisara spoke in earnest.
"How dreadful!" she exclaimed.
Bianca turned her head, for she was not so much absorbed in her conversation with Ghisleri as not to have noticed that Veronica and Taquisara were speaking almost in whispers, which was strange conduct for a young girl with a mere acquaintance, to say the least of it.
"What is so dreadful?" she asked, with a smile.
"Oh!—nothing," answered Veronica, glancing at her, and turning back instantly to Taquisara.
A shade of annoyance was in his face, and Veronica felt suddenly that this was the first real crisis in her life, and that she must hear all he had to say, to the end, at any cost of propriety.
"Come!" she said to Taquisara.
She rose as calmly as a married woman, many years older than she, might have done, and Taquisara was on his feet at the same moment. She led the way down to the marble steps that descended to the sea, and stood on the uppermost one, looking out. Bianca and Ghisleri watched her in surprise and Bianca made a slight movement, as though to follow, but then leaned back again. There was then, and still is, a very strong feeling in Southern Italy against allowing a young girl to be out of earshot with a man.
Though Bianca and Veronica had been children, together, and there was little difference of age between them, Bianca felt that, as the married woman, she was responsible for the observance of social custom. But in a moment she realized that Taquisara was talking of Gianluca, and that anything would be better than to allow Veronica to marry Bosio Macomer.
"I understand," she said to Ghisleri; "let them alone. It is better, so long as only you and I see it."
Down by the steps, Veronica stood very still, looking out over the blue water, and Taquisara was beside her. She waited for him to speak again, sure that he had not said all.
"Such things seem improbable in these days," he said quietly. "You say that it is dreadful. It is. I have seen it, and have been with him day after day. I am not very sensitive, as a rule, but I have had a strange impression which I shall never forget. Gianluca and I met when we were serving our time as volunteers. He was unlike the rest of us, even then. That was why we became friends—because he was unlike me, I suppose."
"Unlike—in what way?" asked Veronica, still looking at the sea.
"It is hard to explain. He is a man of ideals, a religious man, a good man." Taquisara smiled gravely. "That was enough to make him quite different from us all, was it not?"
"I do not know," said the young girl. "Are all men bad, as a rule?"
"Perhaps," answered the Sicilian, shortly. "At all events, Gianluca was not. One saw that all the little that was bad in his life was only a jest, while all the much that was good was real and true."
"You are indeed his friend," said Veronica, softly.
She was struck by the beauty of what the man had said so plainly and unaffectedly.
"Yes, I am his friend," replied Taquisara. "One of his friends, say—for he has many. I am his friend as you are the friend of Donna Bianca. You understand that, do you not? And you understand that there is nothing you would not do for a friend? Not out of mere obligation, because your friend has done much for you, but just for friendship—love, if you choose to call it so. I have heard people speak eloquently of friendship—so have you perhaps. And we both understand what it means, though many do not. That is why I speak as I do, and if I do not speak well, you must forgive me, and feel the meaning I cannot express to your ears. Gianluca loves you, Donna Veronica, as men very rarely love women, so immensely, so strongly, that his love is burning up his life in him—and it has all been kept from you for some reason or other, while your relations are doing their best to make you marry Bosio Macomer, who can no more be compared with Gianluca della Spina than—"
He checked himself, for he felt that his tone was contemptuous, and remembered that Veronica might perhaps like Bosio. She was listening, her eyes fixed on the distance, her mind wide open to the new experience of life which had come so unexpectedly.
"He cannot be compared with Gianluca," continued Taquisara, modifying his sentence and omitting whatever simile had presented itself in his thoughts. "If you knew Gianluca, you would understand. It is because I know him well that I speak for him, that I implore you, pray you, beseech you, to see him before you consent to marry Count Bosio—"
"To see him!" exclaimed Veronica, startled at the sudden proposition, which was a blow to every tradition she had ever learned.
But the Sicilian was not a man to hesitate at trifles where women were concerned, nor men either.
"Yes—to see him!" he answered with a certain vehemence. "Is it a sin? Is it a crime? Is it dishonourable? Why should you cry out? What is society that it should take you young girls by the throat, like martyrs, and chain you with proprieties to the stake of its rigid law—to be burnt to death afterwards by slow fire, like your best friend there, Donna Bianca? Ah—you understand that. You know her life, and I know it too. It is the
