RICHARD BAGOT

NEW YORK AND LONDON

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS

MCMV

Copyright, 1905, by HARPER & BROTHERS.

_All rights Reserved._

Published September, 1905.

*THE PASSPORT*

*I*

The fierce heat of the mid-day hours was waning, and the leaves stirred

in the first faint breath of the evening breeze stealing over the Roman

Campagna from the sea that lay like a golden streak along the western

horizon. It was the month of the _sollione_--of the midsummer sun

"rejoicing as a giant to run his course." From twelve o'clock till four

the little town of Montefiano, nestling among the lower spurs of the

Sabine Hills, had been as a place from which all life had fled. Not a

human creature had been visible in the steep, tufa-paved street leading

up to the square palace that looked grimly down on the little township

clustering beneath it--not even a dog; only some chickens dusting

themselves, and a strayed pig.

The _cicale_, hidden among the branches of a group of venerable Spanish

chestnuts on the piazza in front of the church, had never ceased their

monotonous rattle; otherwise silence had reigned at Montefiano since the

church bells had rung out _mezzogiorno_--that silence which falls on all

nature in Italy during the hours when the _sollione_ blazes in the

heavens and breeds life on the earth.

But now, with the first coming of the evening breeze, casements were

thrown open, green shutters which had been hermetically closed since

morning were flung back and Montefiano awoke for the second time in the

twenty-four hours.

A side door of the church opened, and Don Agostino, the parish priest,

emerged from it, carrying his breviary in one hand and an umbrella

tucked under the other arm. Crossing the little square hurriedly, for

the western sun still beat fiercely upon the flag-stones, he sought the

shade of the chestnut-trees, under which he began pacing slowly

backwards and forwards, saying his office the while.

A tall, handsome man, Don Agostino was scarcely the type of priest

usually to be met with in hill villages such as Montefiano. His black

silk _soutane_ was scrupulously clean and tidy; and its button-holes

stitched with red, as well as the little patch of violet silk at his

throat, proclaimed him to be a _monsignore_. Nobody at Montefiano

called him so, however. To his parishioners he was simply Don Agostino;

and, in a district in which priests were none too well looked upon,

there was not a man, woman, or child who had not a good word to say for

him.

This was the more remarkable inasmuch as Don Agostino was evidently of a

very different social grade from even the most well-to-do among his

flock. At first sight, a stranger would have thought that there could

not be much in common between him and the peasants and farmers who stood

in a little crowd at the doors of his church on a _festa_ while he said

mass, and still less with the women and children who knelt within the

building. There was, however, the most important thing of all in common

between them, and that was sympathy--human sympathy--so simple a thing,

and yet so rare.

This, again, was remarkable; for no one could glance at Don Agostino's

countenance without at once realizing that it belonged to a man who was

probably intellectual and certainly refined. It would not be imagined,

for instance, that there could be any fellow-feeling between him and the

woman a few yards down the street who, indifferent as to the scantiness

of the garments by way of clothing a well-developed bust, was leaning

out of a window screaming objurgations at a small boy for chasing the

strayed pig. Nevertheless, Don Agostino would doubtless have entered

into the feelings of both the woman and the boy--and, probably, also

into those of the pig--had he noticed the uproar, which, his thoughts

being concentrated for the moment on the saying of his office, he did

not do.

He had been at Montefiano some years now, and the stories current at the

time of his arrival in the place as to the reason why he had been sent

there from Rome were wellnigh forgotten by his parishioners. At first

they held aloof from him suspiciously, as from one who was not of their

condition in life, and who had only been sent to Montefiano

because--well, because of some indiscretion committed at Rome. Some

said it was politics, others that it was women, and others, again, that

it was neither the one nor the other. All agreed that an _instruito_

like Don Agostino, with his air of a _gran signore_, and money behind

that air, too, was not sent to a place like Montefiano for nothing.

Don Agostino, however, had not troubled himself as to what was said or

thought, but had taken up his duties with that unquestioning obedience

which spiritual Rome has incorporated with the rest of her heritage from

the Caesars. He neither offered any explanations nor made any complaints

concerning the surroundings to which he found himself relegated. For

two or three years after his first coming to Montefiano strangers had

sometimes visited him, and once or twice a cardinal had come from Rome

to see him--but that was ten years ago and more, and now nobody came.

Probably, the Montefianesi said, the Vatican had forgotten him; and they

added, with a shrug of the shoulders, that it was better for a priest to

be forgotten in Montefiano than remembered in a cup of chocolate in

Rome.

As to any little affair of morals--well, it was certain that twenty,

nay, even fifteen, years ago Don Agostino must have been a very

good-looking young man, priest or no priest; and shoulders were shrugged

again.

Whatever had been the cause of it, morals or politics, Monsignor

Agostino was _parroco_ of Montefiano, a Sabine village forty miles from

Rome, with a population of some three thousand souls--a gray mass of

houses clustering on a hill-side, crowned by the feudal fortress of its

owners who had not slept a night within its walls since Don Agostino had

taken over the spiritual interests of their people.

To be sure, Montefiano was a commune, and petty officialism was as

rampant within its bounds as in many a more important place. But the

princes of Montefiano were lords of the soil, and lords also of its

tillers, as they were of other possessions in the Agro Romano. There

had been a time, not so very many years ago, when a prince of Montefiano

could post from Rome to Naples, passing each night on one of the family

properties; but building-contractors, cards, and cocottes had combined

to reduce the acreage in the late prince's lifetime, and Montefiano was

now one of the last of the estates left to his only child, a girl of

barely eighteen summers.

The Montefiano family had been singularly unlucky in its last two

generations. The three younger brothers of the late prince had

died--two of them when mere lads, and the third as a married but

childless man. The prince himself had married early in life the

beautiful daughter of a well-known Venetian house, who had brought a

considerable dowry with her, and whom he had deceived and neglected from

the first week of his marriage with her until her death, which had

occurred when the one child born of the union was but a few months old.

Then, after some years, the prince had married again. He had taken to

religion in later life, when health had suddenly failed him.

His second wife was a Belgian by birth, and had gained a considerable

reputation for holiness in "black" circles in Rome. Indeed, it was

generally supposed that it was a mere question of time before

Mademoiselle d'Antin should take the veil. Other questions, however,

apparently presented themselves for her consideration, and she took the

Principe di Montefiano instead. It appeared that, after all, this, and

not the cloister, was her true vocation; for she piloted the broken-down

_roue_ skilfully, and at the same time rapidly to the entrance, at all

events, to purgatory, where she left the helm in order to enjoy her

widow's portion, and to undertake the guardianship of her youthful

step-daughter Donna Bianca Acorari, now princess of Montefiano in her

own right.

Some people in Rome said that the deceased Montefiano was bored and

prayed to death by his pious wife and the priests with whom she

surrounded him. These, however, were chiefly the boon companions of the

prince's unregenerate days, whose constitutions were presumably stronger

than his had proved itself to be.

Rome--respectable Rome--was edified at the ending that the Prince of

Montefiano had made, at the piety of his widow, and also at the fact

that there was more money in the Montefiano coffers than anybody had

suspected could be the case.

The portion left to the widowed princess was, if not large, at least

considerably larger than had been anticipated even by those who believed

that they knew the state of her husband's affairs better than their

neighbors; and by the time Donna Bianca should be of an age to marry,

her fortune would, or should, be worth the attention of any husband, let

alone the fiefs and titles she would bring into that husband's family.

The Princess of Montefiano, since her widowhood, had continued to live

quietly on the first floor of the gloomy old palace behind the Piazza

Campitelli, in Rome, which had belonged to the family from the sixteenth

century. The months of August, September, and October she and her

step-daughter usually spent at a villa near Velletri, but except for

this brief period Rome was their only habitation. The princess went

little into the world, even into that of the "black" society, and it was

generally understood that she occupied herself with good works. Indeed,

those who professed to know her intimately declared that had it not been

for the sense of her duty towards her husband's little girl, she would

have long ago retired into a convent, and would certainly do so when

Donna Bianca married.

In the mean time, the great, square building, with its Renaissance

facade which dominated the little town of Montefiano, remained unvisited

by its possessors, and occupied only by the agent and his family, who

lived in a vast apartment on the ground-floor of the palace. The agent

collected the rents and forwarded them to the princess's man of business

in Rome, and to the good people of Montefiano the saints and the angels

were personalities far more realizable than were the owners of the soil

on which they labored.

Not that Don Agostino knew the princess any better than did his

parishioners. He always insisted that he had never seen her. His

attitude, indeed, had been a perpetual cause of surprise to the agent,

who, when Don Agostino first came to the place, had not unreasonably

supposed that whenever the priest went to Rome, which he did at long

intervals, becoming ever longer as time went on, one of his first

objects would be to present himself at the Palazzo Acorari.

Apparently, however, Don Agostino did not deem it necessary to know the

princess or Donna Bianca personally. Possibly he considered that so long

as his formal letters to the princess on behalf of his flock in times of

distress or sickness met with a satisfactory response, there was no

reason to obtrude himself individually on their notice. This, at least,

was the conclusion that the agent and the official classes of Montefiano

arrived at. As to the humbler members of Don Agostino's flock, they did

not trouble themselves to draw any conclusions except the most

satisfactory one involved in the knowledge that, as the Madonna and the

saints stood between them and Domeneddio without their being personally

acquainted with him, so Don Agostino stood between them and the

excellencies in Rome, who, of course, could not spare the time to visit

so distant a place as Montefiano.

*II*

Don Agostino, his office completed, closed his breviary and stood gazing

across the plain below to where Rome lay. On a clear day, and almost

always in the early mornings in summer, the cupola of St. Peter's could

be seen from Montefiano, hung, as it were, midway between earth and

heaven; but now only a low-lying curtain of haze marked the position of

the city. Down in the valley, winding between low cliffs clothed with

brushwood and stunted oaks, the waters of the Tiber flashed in the

slanting sun-rays, and the bold outline of Soracte rose in the blue

distance, like an island floating upon a summer sea.

And Don Agostino stood and gazed, and as he did so he thought of the

restless life forever seething in the far-off city he knew so well--the

busy brains that were working, calculating, intriguing in the shadow of

that mighty dome which bore the emblem of self-sacrifice and humility on

its summit, and of all the good and all the evil that was being wrought

beneath that purple patch of mist that hid--Rome.

None knew the good and the evil better than he, and the mysterious way

in which the one sprang from the other in a never-ending circle, as it

had sprung now for wellnigh twenty centuries--ever since the old gods

began to wear halos and to be called saints.

Don Agostino, or, to give him his proper name and ecclesiastical rank,

Monsignor Lelli, had been a canon of the basilica of Santa Maria

Maggiore, in Rome, before he fell into disgrace at the Vatican.

Notwithstanding the gossip which had been rife concerning the reasons

for his exile from Rome to Montefiano, private morals had had nothing to

do with the matter. For several years he had filled a post of some

confidence at the Vatican--a post, like that held by Judas Iscariot,

involving considerable financial responsibility.

Judas Iscariot, however, had been more fortunate than Monsignor Lelli,

inasmuch as he was attached to the financial service of Christ, and not

to that of Christ's vicar.

To make a long story short, certain loans, advanced for political

purposes, though private social interests were not extraneous to the

transactions, lightened the money-bags to an unforeseen extent, and the

securities which Monsignor Lelli held in their stead soon proved to be

little better than waste paper. It was known that Monsignor Lelli had

acted under protest, and, moreover, that he had obeyed instructions

which he had no choice but to obey.

The Vatican, however, differs in no way from any other organization to

carry on which the rules of discipline must be strictly maintained; and

when a superior officer blunders, a subordinate must, if possible, be

found to bear the blame. In this case Monsignor Lelli was manifestly the

fit and proper scape-goat; and here all comparison with Judas Iscariot

ended, for he had walked off with his burden to Montefiano without

uttering so much as a protesting bleat.

But at Rome the true motives for actions both public and private are

rarely to be discovered on the surface. Nominally, Monsignor Lelli's

disgrace was the direct consequence of his negligence in safeguarding

the sums of money for the sound investment of which he was supposed to

be responsible. Practically, its cause lay elsewhere. He was known to

be a Liberal in his political views, the friend of a prominent foreign

cardinal resident in Rome, to whose influence, indeed, he owed his

canonry of Santa Maria Maggiore, and whose attitude towards the Italian

government, and also towards various dogmatic questions, had for some

time aroused the ill-will of a pontiff who was even more anti-Italian

than his predecessor. Unfortunately for himself, Monsignor Lelli had

published his views on the relations between Church and State, and had

drawn down upon his head the wrath of the clerical party in consequence.

His enemies, and they were many, left no means untried to bring about

his disgrace, fully aware that by doing so they would at the same time

be striking a blow at the obnoxious cardinal who supported not only

Monsignor Lelli but also every Liberal ecclesiastic in Rome. When it

became evident that more than one grave financial blunder had been

committed by others in authority, it was equally obvious that the moment

to strike this blow had arrived, and it was delivered accordingly.

All these things, however, had happened years ago. The cardinal was

dead--of one of those mysteriously rapid illnesses which he made no

secret to his more intimate friends as being likely some day to overtake

him--and Monsignor Lelli remained at Montefiano, forgotten, as his

parishioners declared, though he himself knew well that at Rome nothing

is forgotten, and that so long as his enemies lived, so long would he,

Monsignor Lelli, be required to devote his learning and his intellect to

the needs of a peasant population. Afterwards--well, it was of the

afterwards he was thinking, as he gazed dreamily over the great plain

stretching away to Rome, when the sound of horses' hoofs in the street

below attracted his attention, and, looking round, he saw the agent,

Giuseppe Fontana--Sor Beppe, as he was commonly called in

Montefiano--riding towards him apparently in some haste.

Don Agostino moved out of the shade to meet him.

"Signor Fattore, good-evening!" he said, courteously, knowing that the

man liked to be given his full official title as administrator of the

Montefiano fief.

Sor Beppe rode up alongside of him, raising his felt hat as he returned

the salutation. He wore his official coat of dark-blue cloth, on the

silver buttons of which were engraved the arms and coronet of the

Montefiano. He was a powerfully made man with a dark, grizzled beard,

inclining to gray, and he sat his horse--a well-built black stallion--as

one who was more often in the saddle than out of it. On ordinary days

he would carry a double-barrelled gun slung across his shoulders, but

to-day the weapon was absent.

Don Agostino noted the fact, and also that the agent's face was lighted

up with unusual excitement.

"And what is there new, Signor Fontana?" he asked, briefly.

"_Perbacco_! What is there new?" repeated Fontana. "There is a whole

world of new--but your reverence will never guess what it is! Such a

thing has not happened for fifteen years--"

"But what is it?" insisted Don Agostino, tranquilly. "I quite believe

that nothing new has happened in Montefiano for fifteen years. I have

been here nearly ten, and--"

"I have ridden down to tell you. The letter came only an hour ago. Her

excellency the princess--their excellencies the princesses, I should

say--"

"Well," interrupted Don Agostino, "what about them?"

The agent took a letter from his pocket and spread it out on the pommel

of his saddle. Then he handed it to Don Agostino.

"There!" he exclaimed. "It is her excellency herself who writes. They

are coming here--to the palace--to stay for weeks--months, perhaps."

Don Agostino uttered a sudden ejaculation. It was difficult to say

whether it was of surprise or dismay.

"Here!" he said--"to Montefiano? But the place is dismantled--a

barrack!"

"And do I not know it--I?" returned Sor Beppe. "There are some tables

and some chairs--and there are things that once were beds; but there is

nothing else, unless it is some pictures on the walls--and the

prince--blessed soul--took the best of those to Rome years ago."

Don Agostino read the letter attentively.

"The princess says that all the necessary furniture will be sent from

Rome at once," he observed, "and servants--everything, in fact. The

rooms on the _piano nobile_ are to be made ready--and the chapel. Well,

Signor Fontana," he continued, "you will have plenty to occupy your time

if, as the princess says, everything is to be ready in a fortnight from

to-day. After all, the palace was built to be lived in--is it not

true?"

"Very true, reverence; but it is so sudden. After so many years, to

want everything done in fifteen days--"

"Women, my dear Signor Fontana--women!" said Don Agostino,

deprecatingly.

The agent laughed. "That is what I said to my wife," he replied.

"It was not a wise thing to say," observed Don Agostino.

"It is an incredible affair," resumed the other, brushing a fly from his

horse's flank as he spoke; "and no reception by the people--as little

notice as possible to be taken of their excellencies' arrival. You see

what the letter says, reverence?"

"Yes," replied Don Agostino, meditatively. "It is unusual, certainly,

under the circumstances."

"But," he added, "the princess has undoubtedly some good reason for

wishing to arrive at Montefiano in as quiet a manner as possible.

Perhaps she is ill, or her daughter is ill--who knows?"

"They say she is a saint," observed Fontana.

Don Agostino looked at him; the tone of Sor Beppe's voice implied that

such a fact would account for any eccentricity. Then he smiled.

"She is at all events the mistress of Montefiano, until the young

princess is of age or marries," he remarked; "so, Signor Fontana, there

is nothing more to be said or done."

"Except to obey her excellency's instructions."

"Exactly--except to obey her instructions," repeated Don Agostino.

"It is strange that your reverence, the _parroco_ of Montefiano, should

never have seen our _padrona_."

"It is still stranger that you--her representative here--should never

have seen her," returned Don Agostino.

"That is true," said the agent; "but"--and his white teeth gleamed in

his beard as he smiled--"saints do not often show themselves,

_reverendo_! My respects," he added, lifting his hat and gathering up

his reins. "I have to ride down to Poggio to arrange with the

station-master there for the arrival of the things which will be sent

from Rome." And settling himself in his saddle, Sor Beppe started off

at an easy canter and soon disappeared round a turn of the white road,

leaving a cloud of dust behind him.

Don Agostino looked after him for a moment or two, and then returned

thoughtfully to his house.

The intelligence the agent had brought him was news, indeed, and he

wondered what its true purport might be. It was certainly strange that,

after studiously avoiding Montefiano for all these years, the princess

should suddenly take it into her head to come there for a prolonged

stay. Hitherto, Don Agostino had been very happy in his exile, chiefly

because that exile was so complete. There had been nobody at Montefiano

to rake up the past, to open old wounds which the passing of years had

cicatrized, and which only throbbed now and again when memory insisted

upon asserting her rights.

The petty jealousies and malignities which poison the atmosphere of most

courts, and which in that of the Vatican are the more poisonous inasmuch

as they wear a religious mask, could not penetrate to Montefiano, or, if

they did, could not long survive out of the air of Rome. Monsignor

Lelli had quickly realized this; and, the confidence of his parishioners

once gained, he had learned to appreciate the change of air. The

financial conditions of the Vatican did not interest Montefiano.

Consequently, the story of Don Agostino's financial indiscretions had

not reached the little room in the Corso Garibaldi, which was the

nightly resort of the more wealthy among the community, and in which

high political matters were settled with a rapidity that should have

made the parliaments of Europe blush--were any one of them capable of

blushing.

As to the other stories--well, Don Agostino had soon lived them down.

Montefiano had declared--with some cynicism, perhaps, but with much

justice--that there were those who were lucky in their adventures and

those who were unlucky, and that priests, when all was said and done,

were much the same as other people. Nevertheless, Montefiano had kept

its eyes on Don Agostino for a while, in case of accidents--for nobody

likes accidents to happen at home.

But it was not entirely of these matters that Don Agostino was thinking

as he let himself into the little garden by the side of the church. His

house, connected with the sacristy by a _pergola_ over which vines and

roses were struggling for the mastery, stood at the end of this garden,

and Don Agostino, opening the door quietly lest his housekeeper should

hear and descend upon him, passed into his study.

The news Sor Beppe had brought had awakened other memories--memories

which took him back to the days before he was a priest; when he had been

a young fellow of three or four and twenty, very free from care, very

good to look upon, and very much in love.

It was strange, perhaps, that the impending arrival at Montefiano of an

elderly lady and a girl of seventeen, neither of whom Don Agostino had

ever seen, should arouse in him memories of his own youth; but so it

was. Such links in the chain that binds us to the past--a chain that

perhaps death itself is powerless to break--are perpetually forging

themselves in the present, and often trifles as light as air rivet them.

In this case the link had been forged long ago. Don Agostino remembered

the forging of it every time he donned the sacred vestments to say mass,

and was conscious that the years had riveted it only more firmly.

It was, perhaps, as well that his housekeeper was busy plucking a

chicken in the back premises; and it was certainly as well that none of

his flock could have observed their pastor's actions when he had shut

himself into his study, otherwise unprofitable surmises, long rejected

as such, would have cropped up again round the measures of wine in the

Caffe Garibaldi that evening.

For some time Don Agostino sat in front of his writing-table thinking,

his face buried in his hands. The joyous chattering of the

house-martins flying to and from their nests came through the open

windows, and the scent of roses and Madonna lilies. But presently the

liquid notes of the swallows changed into the soft lapping of waters

rising and falling on marble steps; the scent of the lilies was there,

but mingling with it was the salt smell of the lagoons, the warm, silky

air blowing in from the Adriatic. The distant sounds from the village

street became, in Don Agostino's ears, the cries of the gondoliers and

the fishermen, and Venice rose before his eyes--Venice, with the rosy

light of a summer evening falling on her palaces and her churches,

turning her laughing waters into liquid flame; Venice, with her murmur

of music in the air as the gondolas and the fishing-boats glided away

from the city across the lagoons to the Lido and the sea; Venice,

holding out to him youth and love, and the first sweet dawning of the

passion that only youth and love can know.

Suddenly Don Agostino raised his head and looked about him as one looks

who wakes from a dream. His eyes fell upon the crucifix standing on his

table and on the ivory Christ nailed to it. And then his dream passed.

Rising, he crossed the room, and, unlocking a cabinet, took from it a

tiny miniature and one letter--the only one left to him, for he had

burned the rest. The keeping of this letter had been a compromise. For

do not the best of us make a compromise with our consciences

occasionally?

The face in the miniature was that of a young girl--a child almost--but

exceedingly beautiful, with the red-gold hair and creamy coloring of the

Venetian woman of the Renaissance.

Don Agostino looked at it long; afterwards, almost mechanically, he

raised the picture towards his lips. Then, with a sudden gesture, as

though realizing what he was about to do, he thrust it back into the

drawer of the cabinet. But he kissed the letter before he replaced it

beside the miniature.

It was merely another compromise, this time not so much with his

conscience, perhaps, as with his priesthood.

"Bianca!" he said, aloud, and his voice dwelt on the name with a

lingering tenderness. "Bianca! And she--that other woman--she brings

your child here--here, where I am! Well, perhaps it is you who send

her--who knows? Perhaps it was you who sent me to Montefiano--you, or

the blessed Mother of us all--again, who knows? It was strange, was it

not, that of all places they should send me here, where your child was

born, the child that should have been--"

The door was flung open hastily, and Don Agostino's housekeeper filled

the threshold.

"_Madonna mia Santissima!_" she exclaimed. "It is your reverence, after

all. I thought I heard voices--"

"Yes, Ernana, it is I," said Don Agostino, quietly.

"_Accidente!_ but you frightened me!" grumbled the woman. "I was

plucking the chicken for your reverence's supper, and--"

"So I perceive," remarked Don Agostino, watching feathers falling off

her person to the floor. "And you heard voices," he added. "Well, I

was talking to myself. You can return to the chicken, Ernana, in

peace!"

"The chicken is a fat chicken," observed Ernana, reflectively. "_A

proposito_," she added, "will your reverence eat it boiled? It sits

more lightly on the stomach at night--boiled."

"I will eat it boiled," said Don Agostino.

"And with a _contorno_ of rice?"

Don Agostino sighed.

"Rice?" he repeated, absently. "Of course, Ernana; with rice, certainly

with rice."

*III*

Palazzo Acorari, the residence in Rome of the princes of Montefiano, was

situated, as has already been said, in that old quarter of the city

known as the Campitelli. It stood, indeed, but a few yards away from

the piazza of the name, in a deserted little square through which few

people passed save those whose business took them into the squalid

streets and _vicoli_ opening out of the Piazza Montanara.

It was not one of the well-known palaces of Rome, although it was of far

greater antiquity than many described at length in the guide-books;

neither was it large in comparison with some of its near neighbors.

Nine people out of ten, if asked by a stranger to direct them to Palazzo

Acorari, would have been unable to reply, although, from a mingled sense

of the courtesy due to a _forestiero_, and fear of being taken for

_forestiero_ themselves, they would probably have attempted to do so all

the same, to the subsequent indignation of the stranger.

There was no particular reason why Palazzo Acorari should be well known.

It contained no famous works of art, and its apartments, though stately

in their way, were neither historic nor on a large enough scale to have

ever been rented by rich foreigners as a stage on which they could play

at being Roman nobles to an appreciative if somewhat cynical audience.

A narrow and gloomy _porte cochere_ opened from the street into the

court-yard round which the Palazzo Acorari was built. Except for an

hour or two at mid-day no ray of sunlight ever penetrated into this

court, which, nevertheless, was picturesque enough with its graceful

arches and its time-worn statues mounting guard around it. A porter in

faded livery dozed in his little office on one side of the entrance, in

the intervals of gossiping with a passer-by on the doings and misdoings

of the neighbors, and he, together with a few pigeons and a black cat,

were generally the only animate objects to be seen by those who happened

to glance into the quadrangle.

The princess and her step-daughter inhabited the first floor of the

palace, while the ground-floor was apportioned off into various _locali_

opening on to the streets, in which a cobbler, a retail charcoal and

coke vender, a mattress-maker, and others plied their respective trades.

On the second floor, immediately above the princess's apartment, was

another suite of rooms. This apartment had been unlet for two or three

years, and it was only some six or eight months since it had found a

tenant.

The princess was not an accommodating landlady. Possibly she regarded

concessions to the tenants of her second floor as works of

supererogation--laudable, perhaps, but not necessary to salvation.

Moreover, the tenants on the second floor never went to mass--at least,

so the Abbe Roux had gathered from the porter, whose business it was to

know the concerns of every one dwelling in or near Palazzo Acorari.

There had been, consequently, passages of arms concerning responsibility

for the repairs of water-pipes and similar objects, in which it was

clearly injurious to the glory of God and the interests of the Church

that the princess should be the one to give way. She had been, indeed,

on the point of declining the offer of Professor Rossano to take the

vacant apartment. He was a well-known scientist, with a reputation

which had travelled far beyond the frontiers of Italy, and, in

recognition of his work in the domain of physical science, had been

created a senator of the Italian kingdom. But a scientific reputation

was not a thing which appealed to the princess, regarding as she did all

scientific men as misguided and arrogant individuals in league with the

freemasons and the devil to destroy faith upon the earth. The Abbe

Roux, however, had counselled tolerance, accompanied by an addition of

five hundred francs a year to the rent. The apartment had been long

unlet, and was considerably out of repair; but the professor had taken a

fancy to it, as being in a quiet and secluded position where he could

pursue his studies undisturbed by the noise of the tram-cars, which even

then were beginning to render the chief thoroughfares of Rome odious to

walk and drive in, and still more odious to live in.

As he was a man of some means, he had not demurred at the extra rent

which the princess's agent had demanded at the last moment before the

signing of the lease. Apart from the fact that he was a scientist and a

senator of that kingdom of which the princess affected to ignore the

existence, there had seemed to be nothing undesirable about Professor

Rossano as a tenant. He was a widower, with a son of four-and-twenty

and a daughter a year or two older who lived with him; and, after her

tenant's furniture had been carried in and the upholsterers had done

their work, the princess had been hardly conscious that the apartment

immediately above her own was occupied. On rare occasions she had

encountered the professor on the staircase, and had bowed in answer to

his salutation; but there was no acquaintance between them, nor did

either show symptoms of wishing to interchange anything but the most

formal of courtesies. Sometimes, too, when going out for, or returning

from, their daily drive, the princess and her step-daughter would meet

Professor Rossano's daughter, who was usually accompanied by her maid, a

middle-aged person of staid demeanor who seemed to act as a companion to

the Signorina Giacinta, as, according to the porter, Senator Rossano's

daughter was called. The girls used to look at each other curiously,

but weeks went by before a word passed between them.

"They are not of our world," the princess had said, decisively, to

Bianca shortly after the Rossanos' arrival, "and there is no necessity

for us to know them"--and the girl had nodded her head silently, though

with a slight sigh. It was not amusing to be princess of Montefiano in

one's own right and do nothing but drive out in a closed carriage every

afternoon, and perhaps walk for half an hour outside one of the city

gates or in the Villa Pamphili with one's stepmother by one's side and a

footman ten paces behind. Bianca Acorari thought she would like to have

known Giacinta Rossano, who looked amiable and _simpatica_, and was

certainly pretty. But though there was only the thickness of a floor

between them, the two establishments were as completely apart as if the

Tiber separated them, and Bianca knew by experience that it would be

useless to attempt to combat her step-mother's prejudices. Indeed, she

herself regarded the professor and his daughter with a curiosity not

unmixed with awe, and would scarcely have been surprised if a judgment

had overtaken them even on their way up and down the staircase; for had

not Monsieur l'Abbe declared that neither father nor daughter ever went

to mass?

This assertion was not strictly true--at any rate, so far as the

Signorina Giacinta was concerned. The professor, no doubt, seldom went

inside a church, except, perhaps, on special occasions, such as Easter

or Christmas. He possessed a scientific conscience as well as a

spiritual conscience, and he found an insuperable difficulty in

reconciling the one with the other on a certain point of dogma which

need not be named. He was not antichristian, however, though he might

be anticlerical, and he encouraged Giacinta to go to the churches rather

than the reverse, as many fathers of families in his position do, both

in Italy and elsewhere.

Professor Rossano and his daughter had inhabited the Palazzo Acorari

nearly three months before Bianca made the discovery that the girl at

whom she had cast stolen glances of curiosity, as being the first

heretic of her own nationality she had ever beheld, was, if appearances

spoke the truth, no heretic at all. She had actually seen Giacinta

kneeling in the most orthodox manner at mass in the neighboring church

of Santa Maria dei Campitelli. Bianca had informed the princess of her

discovery that very day at breakfast in the presence of the Abbe Roux,

who was an invariable guest on Sundays and feast-days. She nourished a

secret hope that her step-mother might become more favorably disposed

towards the family on the second floor if it could satisfactorily be

proved not to be entirely heretical. The princess, however, did not

receive the information in the spirit Bianca had expected.

"People of that sort," she had responded, coldly, "often go to mass in

order to keep up appearances, or sometimes to meet--oh, well"--she broke

off, abruptly--"to stare about them as you seem to have been doing this

morning, Bianca, instead of saying your prayers. Is it not so, Monsieur

l'Abbe?" she added to the priest, with whom she generally conversed in

French, though both spoke Italian perfectly.

The Abbe Roux sighed. "Ah, yes, madame," he replied, "unluckily it is

undoubtedly so. The Professor Rossano, if one is to judge by certain

arrogant and anticatholic works of which he is the author, is not likely

to have brought up his children to be believers. And if one does not

believe, what is the use of going to mass?--except--except--" And here

he checked himself as the princess had done, feeling himself to be on

the verge of an indiscretion.

"You hear, Bianca, what Monsieur l'Abbe says," observed the princess.

"You must understand once for all, that what Professor Rossano and his

daughter may or may not do is no concern of ours--"

"So long as they pay their rent," added the Abbe, pouring himself out

another glass of red wine.

"So long as they pay their rent," the princess repeated. "They are not

of our society--" she continued.

"And do not dance," interrupted Bianca.

The princess looked at her a little suspiciously. She was never quite

sure whether Bianca, notwithstanding her quiet and apparently somewhat

apathetic disposition, was altogether so submissive as she seemed.

"Dance!" she exclaimed. "Why should they dance? I don't know what you

mean, Bianca."

"It is against the contract to dance on the second floor. The guests

might fall through on to our heads," observed Bianca, tranquilly.

"Bettina told me so, and the porter told her--"

The princess frowned. "Bettina talks too much," she said, with an

unmistakable air of desiring that the subject should drop.

Bianca relapsed into silence. It was very evident that, however devout

the Rossano girl might be, she would not be allowed to make her

acquaintance. Her observant eyes had watched the Abbe Roux's

countenance as she made her little effort to further that desired event,

for she was very well aware that no step was likely to be taken in this,

or, indeed, in any other matter unless the Abbe approved of it.

Privately, Bianca detested the priest, and with a child's unerring

instinct--for she was still scarcely more than a child in some

things--she felt that he disliked her.

Nor was this state of things of recent origin. Ever since the Abbe Roux

had become, as it were, a member of the Montefiano household, Bianca

Acorari had entertained the same feeling towards him. Her obstinacy on

this point, indeed, had first awakened the princess to the fact that her

step-daughter had a very decided will of her own, which, short of

breaking, nothing was likely to conquer.

This stubbornness, as the princess called it, had shown itself in an

unmistakable manner when Bianca, though only twelve years old, had

firmly and absolutely refused to confess to Monsieur l'Abbe. In vain

the princess had threatened punishment both immediate and future, and in

vain the Abbe Roux had admonished her. Make her confession to him, she

would not. To any other priest, yes; to him, no--not then or ever.

There was nothing more to be said or done--for both the princess and

Monsieur l'Abbe knew well enough that the child was within her rights

according to the laws of the Church, though of course she herself was

unaware of the fact. There had been nothing for it, as weeks went on

and Bianca never drew back from the position she had taken up, but to

give way as gracefully as might be--but it was doubtful if the Abbe Roux

had ever forgiven the want of confidence in him which the child had

displayed, although he had afterwards told her that the Church left to

all penitents the right of choice as to their confessors.

When Bianca grew older, the princess had intended to send her to the

Convent of the Assumption in order to complete her education, and at the

same time place her under some discipline. The girl was delicate,

however, and it was eventually decided that it was better that she

should be educated at home.

Perhaps it was the gradual consciousness that she was debarred from

associating with any one of her own age which had made Bianca think

wistfully that it would be pleasant to make the acquaintance of the

attractive-looking girl whom she passed occasionally on the staircase,

and who had come to live under the same roof as herself. She could not

but notice that the older she became the more she seemed to be cut off

from the society of others of her years. Formerly she had occasionally

been allowed to associate with the children of her step-mother's friends

and acquaintances, and, at rare intervals, they had been invited to some

childish festivity at Palazzo Acorari.

By degrees, however, her life had become more and more isolated, and for

the last year or two the princess, a governess who came daily to teach

her modern languages and music, and her maid and attendant, Bettina, had

been her only companions.

Rightly or wrongly, Bianca associated the restriction of her

surroundings with the influence of the Abbe Roux, and the suspicion only

increased the dislike she had always instinctively borne him.

It never entered into her head, however, to suggest to the princess that

her life was an exceedingly dull one. Indeed, having no means of

comparing it with the lives of other girls of her age, she scarcely

realized that it was dull, and she accepted it as the natural order of

things. It had not been until she had seen Giacinta Rossano that an

indefinable longing for some companionship other than that of those much

older than herself began to make itself felt within her, and she had

found herself wondering why she had no brothers and sisters, no cousins,

such as other girls must have, with whom they could associate.

In the mean time, life in Palazzo Acorari went on as usual for Bianca.

She fancied that, when they passed each other, the daughter of the

mysterious old professor on the second floor who wrote wicked books

looked at her with increasing interest; and that once or twice, when

Bianca had been accompanied only by Bettina, she had half-paused as

though about to speak, but had then thought better of it and walked on

with a bow and a slight smile.

On one occasion she had ventured to sound Bettina as to whether it would

not be at least courteous on her part to do something more than bow as

she passed the Signorina Rossano. But Bettina was very cautious in her

reply. The princess, it appeared, had been resolute in forbidding any

communication between the two floors, excepting such as might have to be

carried on through the medium of the porter, in the case of such a

calamity as pipes bursting or roofs leaking.

December was nearly over, and Rome was _sotto Natale_. People were

hurrying through the streets buying their Christmas presents, and

thronging the churches to look at the representations of the Holy Child

lying in the manger of Bethlehem; for it was Christmas Eve, and the

great bells of the basilicas were booming forth the tidings of the birth

of Christ. In every house in Rome, among rich and poor alike,

preparations were going on for the family gathering that should take

place that night, and for the supper that should be eaten after midnight

when the strict fast of the Christmas vigil should be over.

The majority, perhaps, paid but little heed to the fasting and

abstinence enjoined by the priests, unless the addition of fresh fish to

the bill of fare--fish brought from Anzio and Nettuno the day before by

the ton weight and sold at the traditional _cottio_ throughout the

night--could be taken as a sign of obedience to the laws of the Church.

But the truly faithful conformed rigidly throughout the day, reserving

themselves for the meats that would be permissible on the return from

the midnight masses, when the birth of a God would be celebrated, as it

has ever been, by a larger consumption than usual of the flesh of His

most innocent creatures on the part of those who invoke Him as a

merciful and compassionate Creator.

This particular Christmas Eve it so happened that the princess was

confined to her bed with a severe cold and fever, which made attendance

at the midnight masses an impossibility so far as she was concerned.

Bianca, however, was allowed to go, accompanied by Bettina, and shortly

after half-past eleven they left Palazzo Acorari, meaning to walk to the

church of San Luigi dei Francesi in the Piazza Navona, one of the few

churches in Rome to which the public were admitted to be present at the

three masses appointed to be said at the dawning hours of Christmas Day.

It was raining in torrents as they emerged from the _portone_ of the

_palazzo_, and to get a cab at that hour of night on Christmas Eve

appeared to be an impossibility, except, perhaps, in the main streets.

Bianca and her attendant consulted together. They would certainly be

wet through before they could reach the Piazza Navona, and it seemed as

though there was nothing to be done but to remain at home. Bettina,

however, suddenly remembered that at the little church of the Sudario,

less than half-way to the Piazza Navona, the midnight masses were also

celebrated. To be sure, it was the church of the Piedmontese, and

chiefly attended by members of the royal household, and often by the

queen herself. The princess would not be altogether pleased, therefore,

at the substitution; but, under the circumstances, Bianca expressed her

determination of going there, and her maid was obliged to acquiesce.

Five minutes plunging through puddles and mud, and battling with a warm

sirocco wind which blew in gusts at the corners of every street, brought

them to the little church hidden away behind the Corso Vittorio

Emmanuele.

A side door communicating with the building was open, and they passed

from the darkness and the driving rain into a blaze of warm light and

the mingled scent of incense and flowers. The high altar, adorned with

priceless white-and-gold embroideries, sparkled in the radiance of

countless wax-candles. Overhead, from a gallery at the opposite end of

the church, the organ was playing softly, the player reproducing on the

reed-stops the pastoral melodies of the _pifferari_, in imitation of the

pipes of the shepherds watching over their flocks through that wonderful

night nineteen centuries ago.

Although it wanted yet twenty minutes to midnight the church was nearly

full, and Bianca and her companion made their way to some vacant seats

half-way up it. Glancing at her neighbors immediately in front of her,

Bianca gave a start of surprise as she recognized Giacinta Rossano.

Bettina's gaze was fixed on the altar, and Bianca hesitated for a

moment. Then she leaned forward and whispered timidly, "_Buona Natale,

buona feste_"--with a little smile.

A pair of soft, dark eyes smiled back into her own. "_Buona Natale, e

buona anno, Donna Bianca_." Giacinta Rossano replied, in a low, clear

voice which caused Bettina to withdraw her eyes from the altar and to

look sharply round to see whence it proceeded. Somebody else turned

round also--a young man whom Bianca had not noticed, but who was sitting

next to Giacinta. For a moment their eyes met, and then she looked away

quickly, half conscious of a sensation of effort in doing so that caused

her a vague surprise. The gaze she had suddenly encountered had seemed

to enchain her own. The eyes that had looked into hers with a

wondering, questioning look were like Giacinta Rossano's, only they were

blue--Bianca felt quite sure of that. They had seemed to shut out for a

second or two the blaze of light on the altar. The momentary feeling of

surprise passed, she turned her head towards the altar again, and as she

did so she overheard Giacinta Rossano's companion whisper to her,

"_Chie?_" accompanied by a rapid backward motion of his head.

Giacinta's reply was inaudible, for at that moment a clear alto voice

from the gallery rang out with the opening notes of the _Adeste

Fideles_. The doors of the sacristy opened, and the officiating priest,

glittering in his vestments of gold-and-white, knelt before the altar.

_Venite Adoremus_ burst forth triumphantly from the choir, the alto

voice rising above the rest like an angel's song. Presently, as the

strains of the Christmas hymn died away, and the soft reed-notes of the

organ resumed the plaintive refrain of the _pifferari_, the celebrant

rose, and then kneeling again on the lowest step of the altar, murmured

the _Confiteor_--and the first mass of the Nativity began.

After the elevation, Bianca Acorari rose from her knees and resumed her

seat. The mellow light from the wax-candles glinted upon the tawny gold

of her hair and her creamy complexion, both of which she had inherited

from her Venetian mother. Many eyes were turned upon her, for though,

so far as regularity of features was concerned, she could not be called

beautiful, yet her face was striking enough, combining as it did the

Italian grace and mobility with a coloring that, but for its warmth,

might have stamped her as belonging to some Northern race.

Owing to the general shuffling of chairs consequent upon the members of

the congregation resuming their seats after the elevation, Bianca

suddenly became aware that Giacinta Rossano's companion had somewhat

changed his position, and that he was now sitting where he could see her

without, as before, turning half round in his seat. Apparently, too, he

was not allowing the opportunity to escape him, for more than once she

felt conscious that his eyes were resting upon her; and, indeed, each

time she ventured to steal a glance in Giacinta's direction that glance

was intercepted--not rudely or offensively, but with the same almost

wondering look in the dark-blue eyes that they had worn when they first

met her own.

Bianca glanced furtively from Giacinta's companion to Giacinta herself

as soon as the former looked away.

Decidedly, she thought, they were very like each other, except in the

coloring of the eyes, for Giacinta's eyes were of a deep, velvety brown.

Suddenly a light dawned upon her. Of course! this must be Giacinta

Rossano's brother--come, no doubt, to spend Christmas with his father

and sister. She had always heard that the professor had a son; but as

this son had never appeared upon the scene since the Rossanos had lived

in the Palazzo Acorari, Bianca had forgotten that he had any existence.

How she wished she had a brother come to spend Christmas with her! It

would, at all events, be more amusing than sitting at dinner opposite to

Monsieur l'Abbe, which would certainly be her fate the following

evening. From all of which reflections it may be gathered that Bianca

was not deriving as much spiritual benefit from her attendance at mass

as could be desired. Perhaps the thought struck her, for she turned

somewhat hastily to Bettina, only to see an expression on that worthy

woman's face which puzzled her. It was a curious expression, half-uneasy

and half-humorous, and Bianca remembered it afterwards.

The three masses came to an end at last, and to the calm, sweet music of

the Pastoral symphony from Haendel's _Messiah_ (for the organist at the

Sudario, unlike the majority of his colleagues in Rome, was a musician

and an artist) the congregation slowly left the church, its members

exchanging Christmas greetings with their friends before going home to

supper. Bettina hurried her charge through the throng, never slackening

speed until they had left the building and turned down a by-street out

of the crowd thronging the Corso Vittorio Emmanuele. Even then she

glanced nervously over her shoulder from time to time, as though to make

sure they were not being followed.

The rain had ceased by this time, and the moon shone in a deep violet

sky, softening the grim mass of the Caetani and Antici-Mattei palaces

which frowned above them. Presently Bettina halted under a flickering

gas-lamp.

"A fine thing, truly," she exclaimed, abruptly, "to go to a midnight

mass to stare at a good-looking boy--under the very nose, too, speaking

with respect, of the _santissimo_!"

Bianca flushed. "He looked at me!" she said, indignantly.

"It is the same thing," returned Bettina--"at least," she added, "it is

generally the same thing--in the end. Holy Virgin! what would her

excellency say--and Monsieur l'Abbe--if they knew such a thing? And the

insolence of it! He looked--and looked! Signorina, it is a thing

unheard of--"

"What thing?" interrupted Bianca, tranquilly.

"What thing?" repeated Bettina, somewhat taken aback. "Why--why--oh,

well," she added, hastily, "it doesn't matter what thing--only, for the

love of God, signorina, do not let her excellency know that you spoke to

the Signorina Rossano to-night!"

"There was no harm," replied Bianca. "I only wished her a good

Christmas--"

"No harm--perhaps not!" returned Bettina; "but, signorina, I do not wish

to find myself in the street, you understand--and it is I who would be

blamed."

Bianca raised her head proudly. "You need not be afraid," she said. "I

do not allow others to be blamed for what I do. As to the Signorina

Rossano, I have made her acquaintance, and I mean to keep it. For the

rest, it is not necessary to say when or how I made it. Come, Bettina,

I hear footsteps."

"You will make the acquaintance of the other one, too," Bettina said to

herself--"but who knows whether you will keep it? Mali!" and with a

sharp shrug of the shoulders she walked by Bianca's side in silence

until they reached Palazzo Acorari, where the porter, who was waiting

for them at the entrance, let them through the gateway and lighted them

up the dark staircase to the doors of the _piano nobile_.

*IV*

"I tell you that it is a _pazzia_--a madness," said Giacinta Rossano.

"The girl is a good girl, and I am sorry for her--shut up in this dreary

house with a step-mother and a priest. But we are not of their world,

and they are not of ours. The princess has made that very clear from

the first."

"And what does it matter?" Silvio Rossano exclaimed, impetuously. "We

are not princes, but neither are we beggars. Does not everybody know

who my father is, Giacinta? And some day, perhaps, I shall make a name

for myself, too--"

Giacinta glanced at her brother proudly.

"Yes," she said, "I believe you will--I am sure you will, if--" And

then she hesitated.

"If what?" demanded Silvio.

"If you do not make an imbecile of yourself first," his sister replied,

dryly.

Silvio Rossano flung the newspaper he had been reading on to the floor,

and his eyes flashed with anger. In a moment, however, the anger

passed, and he laughed.

"All men are imbeciles once in their lives," he said, "and most men are

imbeciles much more frequently--"

"Oh, with these last it does not matter," observed Giacinta, sapiently;

"they do themselves no harm. But you--you are not of that sort, Silvio

_mio_. So before making an imbecile of yourself, it will be better to

be sure that it is worth the trouble. Besides, the thing is ridiculous.

People do not fall in love at first sight, except in novels--and if they

do, they can easily fall out of it again."

"Not the other ones," said Silvio, briefly.

"The other ones? Ah, I understand," and Giacinta looked at him more

gravely. She was very fond of this only brother of hers, and very proud

of him--proud of his already promising career and of his frank, lovable

disposition, as well as of his extreme good looks. In truth, when she

compared Silvio with the large majority of young men of his age and

standing, she had some reason for her pride. Unlike so many young Romans

of the more leisured classes, Silvio Rossano had never been content to

lead a useless and brainless existence. Being an only son, he had been

exempt from military service; but, instead of lounging in the Corso in

the afternoons and frequenting music-halls and other resorts of a more

doubtful character at night, he had turned his attention at a

comparatively early age to engineering. At the present moment, though

barely five-and-twenty, he had just completed the erection of some

important water-works at Bari, during the formation of which he had been

specially chosen by one of the most eminent engineers in Italy to

superintend the works during the great man's repeated absences

elsewhere. Thanks to Silvio Rossano's untiring energy and technical

skill, as well as to his popularity with his subordinates and workmen,

serious difficulties had been overcome in an unusually short space of

time, and a government contract, which at one moment looked as if about

to be unfulfilled by the company with whom it had been placed, was

completed within the period agreed upon. There could be little doubt

that, after his last success, Silvio would be given some lucrative work

to carry out, and, in the mean time, after an absence of nearly a year,

he had come home for a few weeks' rest and holiday, to find his father

and sister installed in Palazzo Acorari.

It was, perhaps, not to be wondered at if Giacinta Rossano felt uneasy

in her mind on her brother's account. She knew his character as nobody

else could know it, for he was barely two years younger than she, and

they had grown up together. She knew that beneath his careless,

good-natured manner there lay an inflexible will and indomitable energy,

and that once these were fully aroused they would carry him far towards

the end he might have in view.

The interest that Donna Bianca Acorari had aroused in Silvio had not

escaped Giacinta's notice. She had observed where his gaze had wandered

so frequently during the midnight mass a few nights previously, and,

knowing that Silvio's life had been too busy a one to have left him much

time to think about love, she had marvelled at the effect that Bianca

Acorari seemed suddenly to have had upon him. Since that night, whenever

they were alone together, he would begin to question her as to the

surroundings of their neighbors on the floor below them, and urge her to

make friends with Donna Bianca. It was in vain that Giacinta pointed

out that she had only interchanged a word or two with the girl in her

life, and that there was evidently a fixed determination on the

princess's part not to permit any acquaintance.

This last argument, she soon discovered, was the very worst that she

could use. Like most Romans of the _bourgeoisie_ to which he by birth

belonged--and, indeed, like Romans of every class outside the so-called

nobility--Silvio was a republican at heart so far as social differences

were concerned; nor--in view of the degeneracy of a class which has done

all in its power in modern days to vulgarize itself in exchange for

dollars, American or otherwise, and to lose any remnant of the

traditions that, until a generation ago, gave the Roman noblesse a claim

upon the respect of the classes nominally below it--could this attitude

be blamed or wondered at.

At first, Giacinta had laughed at her brother for the way in which he

had fallen a victim to the attractions of a young girl whom he had never

seen before, but she had very soon begun to suspect that Silvio's

infatuation was no mere passing whim. She was well aware, too, that

passing whims were foreign to his nature. Since that Christmas night,

he had been more silent and thoughtful than she had ever seen him,

except, perhaps, in his student days, when he had been working more than

usually hard before the examinations.

Of Bianca Acorari herself he spoke little, but Giacinta understood that

the drift of his conversation generally flowed towards the family on the

_piano nobile_ and how its members occupied their day. Moreover,

Silvio, she observed, was much more frequently _in casa_ than was

altogether natural for a young fellow supposed to be taking a holiday,

and he appeared to be strangely neglectful of friends and acquaintances

to whose houses he had formerly been ready to go. Another thing, too,

struck Giacinta as unusual, and scarcely edifying. Silvio had never

been remarkable for an alacrity to go to mass, and Giacinta knew that he

shared the professor's views on certain subjects, and that he had little

partiality for the clergy as a caste. Apparently, however, he had

suddenly developed a devotion to some saint whose relic might or might

not be in the church of Santa Maria in Piazza Campitelli, for Giacinta,

to her surprise, had met him face to face one morning as she had gone to

mass there, and on another occasion she had caught a glimpse of his

figure disappearing behind a corner in the same church. It was only

charitable, she thought, casually to inform this devout church-goer that

the Princess Montefiano had a private chapel in her apartment, in which

the Abbe Roux said mass every morning at half-past eight o'clock.

In the mean time, the professor, occupied with his scientific research,

was in happy ignorance of the fact that disturbing elements were

beginning to be at work within his small domestic circle, and Giacinta

kept her own counsel. She hoped that Silvio would soon get some

employment which would take him away from Rome, for she was very sure

that nothing but mortification and unhappiness would ensue were he to

make Bianca Acorari's acquaintance.

Some days had elapsed since Christmas, and Giacinta Rossano had not

again seen either Bianca or the princess. Under the circumstances, she

by no means regretted the fact, for she rather dreaded lest she and her

brother might encounter them on the staircase, and then, if Silvio

behaved as he had behaved in the Sudario, the princess would certainly

suspect his admiration for her step-daughter.

In Rome, however, families can live under the same roof for weeks, or

even months, without necessarily encountering each other, or knowing

anything of each other's lives or movements; and it so happened that no

opportunity was given to Giacinta, even had she desired it, again to

interchange even a formal greeting with the girl who had evidently made

such an impression at first sight on her brother.

Of late, too, Silvio's interest in their neighbors had apparently

diminished, for he asked fewer questions concerning them, and

occasionally, Giacinta thought, almost seemed as though desirous of

avoiding the subject.

She was not altogether pleased, however, when, after he had been at home

about a month, Silvio one day announced that he had been offered work in

Rome which would certainly keep him in the city for the whole summer.

It was delightful, no doubt, to have him with them. She saw that her

father was overjoyed at the idea, and, had it not been for other

considerations, Giacinta would have desired nothing better than that

Silvio should live permanently with them, for his being at home made her

own life infinitely more varied. She could not help wondering, however,

whether Bianca Acorari had anything to do with Silvio's evident

satisfaction at remaining in Rome. Hitherto, he had shown eagerness

rather than disinclination to get away from Rome, declaring that there

was so little money or enterprise in the capital that any young Roman

wishing to make his way in the world had better not waste his time by

remaining in it.

Now, however, to judge of Silvio's contented attitude, he had found work

which would be remunerative enough without being obliged to seek it in

other parts of Italy or abroad. And so the weeks went by. Lent was

already over, and Easter and spring had come, when Giacinta made a

discovery which roused afresh all her uneasiness on her brother's

behalf.

In some way or another she began to feel convinced that Silvio had

managed either to meet Bianca Acorari, or, at all events, to have some

communication with her. For some little time, indeed, she had suspected

that his entire cessation from any mention of the girl or her

step-mother was not due to his interest in Bianca having subsided.

Silvio's interest in anything was not apt easily to subside when once

fully aroused, and that it had been fully aroused, Giacinta had never

entertained any doubt. Chance furnished her with a clew as to where

Silvio's channels of communication might possibly lie, if indeed he

could have any direct communication with Donna Bianca, which, under the

circumstances, would seem to be almost incredible.

It so happened that one April morning, when summer seemed to have

entered into premature possession of its inheritance, when the Banksia

roses by the steps of the Ara Coeli were bursting into bloom and the

swifts were chasing each other with shrill screams in the blue sky

overhead, Giacinta was returning from her usual walk before the mid-day

breakfast, and, as she turned into the little piazza in which Palazzo

Acorari was situated, she nearly collided with Silvio, apparently

engaged in lighting a cigarette. There was nothing unusual in his being

there at that hour, for he sometimes returned to breakfast _a casa_,

especially on Thursdays, when little or no work is done in Rome in the

afternoons, and this was a Thursday. It struck her, nevertheless, that

Silvio seemed to be somewhat embarrassed by her sudden appearance round

the corner of the narrow lane which connected the piazza with the Piazza

Campitelli. His embarrassment was only momentary, however, and he

accompanied her to the _palazzo_. The cannon at San Angelo boomed

mid-day as they turned into the _portone_, and was answered by the bells

of the churches round. As they slowly mounted the staircase, a lady

came down it. Giacinta did not know her by sight, and, after she had

passed them, she half-turned to look at her, for she fancied that a

glance of mutual recognition was exchanged between her and Silvio,

though the latter raised his hat only with the formality usual in

passing an unknown lady on a staircase. The stranger seemed to hesitate

for a moment, as though she were disconcerted at seeing Silvio in

another person's company. The lady continued her way, however, and if

Giacinta had not happened to look round as she and Silvio turned the

corner of the staircase, she probably would have thought no more of her,

for she was not particularly remarkable, being merely a quietly dressed

woman, perhaps eight-and-twenty or thirty years of age, neither

good-looking nor the reverse. But, as Giacinta looked, the lady

coughed, and the cough re-echoed up the staircase. At the same time she

dropped a folded piece of paper. Apparently she was unconscious that she

had done so, for she continued to descend the stairs without turning her

head, and disappeared round the angle of the court-yard.

"She has dropped something, Silvio," Giacinta said. "Had you not better

go after her? It is a letter, I think."

"Of course!" Silvio answered, a little hastily. "I will catch up with

her and give it to her," and he turned and ran down the staircase as he

spoke.

Giacinta, leaning over the balustrade, saw him pick up the piece of

paper. Then he crumpled it up and thrust it into his pocket.

"That," said Giacinta to herself, "was not prudent of Silvio. One does

not crumple up a letter and pocket it if one is about to restore it to

its owner, unless one's pocket is its proper destination."

Nevertheless, Silvio continued to pursue the lady, and three or four

minutes or more elapsed before he rejoined his sister.

"Well," Giacinta observed, tranquilly. "You gave her back her letter?"

"It was not a letter," said Silvio, "it was only a--a

memorandum--written on a scrap of paper. A thing of no importance,

Giacinta."

"I am glad it was of no importance," returned Giacinta, not caring to

press her original question. "Do you know who she is?" she added.

"I think," answered Silvio, carelessly, "that she must be the lady who

comes to teach the princess's daughter."

"Step-daughter," corrected Giacinta, dryly.

"Of course--step-daughter--I had forgotten. Do you know, Giacinta," he

continued, "that we shall be very late for breakfast?"

It was a silent affair, that breakfast. The professor had been occupied

the whole of the morning in correcting the proofs of a new scientific

treatise, and he had even brought to the table some diagrams which he

proceeded to study between the courses. Silvio's handsome face wore a

thoughtful and worried expression, and Giacinta was engrossed with her

own reflections.

Presently Professor Rossano broke the silence. He was eating asparagus,

and it is not easy to eat asparagus and verify diagrams at the same

time.

"Silvio," he said, mildly, "may one ask whether it is true that you have

fallen in love?"

Silvio started, and looked at his father with amazement. Then he

recovered himself.

"One may ask it, certainly," he replied, "but--"

"But one should not ask indiscreet questions, eh?" continued the

professor. "Well, falling in love is a disease like any

other--infectious in the first stage--after that, contagious--decidedly

contagious."

Silvio laughed a little nervously. "And in the last stage?" he asked.

"Oh, in the last stage one--peels. H one does not, the affair is

serious. I met Giacomelli yesterday--your _maestro_. He said to me:

'Senator, our excellent Silvio is in love. I am convinced that he is in

love. It is a thousand pities; because, when one is in love, one is apt

to take false measurements; and for an engineer to take false

measurements is a bad thing!' That is what Giacomelli said to me in

Piazza Colonna yesterday afternoon."

Silvio looked evidently relieved.

"And may one ask whom I am supposed to be in love with?" he demanded.

"As to that," observed the professor, dryly, "you probably know best.

All that I would suggest is, that you do not allow the malady to become

too far advanced in the second stage--unless"--and here he glanced at

Giacinta--"well, unless you are quite sure that you will peel." And

with a quiet chuckle he turned to his diagrams again.

Silvio caught his sister's eyes fixed upon him. Giacinta had perhaps

not entirely understood her father's metaphors, but it was very clear to

her that others had noticed the change she had observed in Silvio. He

had evidently been less attentive to his work than was his wont; and the

eminent engineer under whom he had studied and made a name for himself,

becoming aware of the fact, had unconsciously divined the true cause of

it. The Commendatore Giacomelli had doubtless spoken in jest to the

father of his favorite pupil, thinking that a parental hint might be

useful in helping Silvio to return to his former diligence. Giacinta

knew her father's good-natured cynicism well enough, and felt certain

that, though treating the matter as a joke, he had intended to let

Silvio know that his superiors had noticed some falling off in his work.

But Giacinta was, unfortunately, only too sure that the right nail had

been hit on the head, even if the blow had fallen accidentally. She did

not feel uneasy lest her father should discover the fact, nor, if he did

so, that he would make any efforts to discover the quarter in which

Silvio's affections were engaged. The professor lived a life very much

of his own, and his nature was a singularly detached one. His attitude

towards the world was that of a quiet and not inappreciative spectator

of a high comedy. His interests were centred in the stage, and also in

the stage-machinery, and he was always ready to be amused or to

sympathize as the case might be, in the passing scenes which that

complex machinery produced. Giacinta often wondered whether her father

ever thought of the possibility of her marriage, or ever considered that

her position as an only daughter was somewhat a lonely one. He had

never made the faintest allusion to the subject to her; but she was sure

that if she were suddenly to announce to him that she was going to

marry, he would receive the information placidly enough, and, when once

he had satisfied himself that she had chosen wisely, would think no more

about the matter. And it would be the same thing as far as Silvio was

concerned--only, in Silvio's case, if Donna Bianca Acorari were the

object on which he had set his affections, Giacinta was certain that the

professor would not consider the choice a wise one. He had a great

dislike to anything in the nature of social unpleasantness, as have many

clever people who live in a detached atmosphere of their own. In print,

or in a lecture-room, he could hit hard enough, and appeared to be

utterly indifferent as to how many enemies he made, or how many pet

theories he exploded by a logic which was at times irritatingly humorous

and at times severely caustic. But, apart from his pen and his

conferences, the Senator Rossano was merely a placid individual,

slightly past middle age, with a beard inclining to gray, and a broad,

intellectual forehead from under which a pair of keen, brown eyes looked

upon life good-naturedly enough. Perhaps the greatest charm about

Professor Rossano was his genuine simplicity--the simplicity which is

occasionally, but by no means always, the accompaniment of intellectual

power, and the possession of which usually denotes that power to be of a

very high order. This simplicity deceived others not infrequently, but

it never deceived him; on the contrary, it was perpetually adding to his

knowledge, scientific and otherwise.

Both Professor Rossano's children had inherited something of their

father's nature, but Silvio had inherited it in a more complex way,

perhaps, than his sister. In him the scientific tendency had shown

itself in the more practical form of a love for the purely mechanical

and utilitarian. Nevertheless, he had the same detached nature, the same

facility for regarding life from the objective point of view, as his

father, and the same good-humored if slightly cynical disposition. Of

the two, Giacinta was probably the more completely practical, and had,

perhaps, the harder disposition. Nor was this unnatural; for their

mother had died when Silvio was a child between five and six years old,

and Giacinta, being then nearly eight, had speedily acquired a certain

sense of responsibility, which, owing to the professor's absorption in

his scientific researches, largely increased as time went on. But

Giacinta, also, had her full share of good-nature and sympathy, though

she was incapable of, as it were, holding herself mentally aloof from

the world around her as did her father and, to a certain degree, her

brother.

Breakfast over, Professor Rossano soon retired again to the correction

of his proofs, leaving Giacinta and Silvio alone together. For a short

time neither of them spoke, and Silvio apparently devoted his whole

attention to the proper roasting of the end of a "Verginia" cigar in the

flame of a candle. Giacinta meditated on the possible contents of the

piece of paper that she felt positive was still lying in a crumpled

condition in her brother's pocket, and wondered what particular part the

lady who had passed them on the staircase might be playing in the

business--though she had already made a very natural guess at it. She

would have given a good deal to know whether the note--or the

memorandum, as Silvio had called it, with a possibly unconscious humor

that had made Giacinta smile--was written by Bianca Acorari herself or

by the quietly dressed young person who was, no doubt, Bianca's daily

governess. If it were from Donna Bianca, then things must have advanced

to what the professor would have termed the contagious stage--only

Giacinta did not employ that simile, its suggestiveness having escaped

her--which would be a decidedly serious affair. If, however, as was far

more probable, the missive came from the governess, who had been

disappointed of the expected opportunity to give it to Silvio

unobserved, and so had dropped it for him to pick up, the matter was

serious, too, but not so serious. If Silvio had won over the governess

to aid him in furthering his plans, Giacinta thought that she, too,

might manage to do a little corrupting on her own account with the same

individual. It did not immediately strike her that Silvio's sex, as

well as his particularly attractive face and personality, might have

removed many difficulties out of his path in dealing with the

demure-looking female who devoted three hours a day to the improvement

of Donna Bianca's education.

Presently, Giacinta became restive under the prolonged silence which

followed the professor's departure from the room.

"You see, Silvio," she observed, as though she were merely continuing an

interrupted conversation, "it is not only I who notice that you have had

your head in the clouds lately--oh, ever since Christmas. And first of

all, people will say: 'He is in love'--as Giacomelli said to papa

yesterday; and then they will begin to ask: 'Who is the girl?' And

then, very soon, some busybody will find out. It is always like that.

And then--"

"Yes, Giacinta--and then?" repeated Silvio.

"I will tell you!" returned Giacinta, decidedly. "Then that priest,

Monsieur l'Abbe Roux, as they call him, will be sent by the princess to

see papa, and there will be well, a terrible _disturbo_--"

"The Abbe Roux can go to hell," observed Silvio.

"Afterwards--yes, perhaps. Papa has several times given him a similar

permission. But in the mean time he will make matters exceedingly

unpleasant. After all, Silvio," Giacinta continued, "let us be

reasonable. The girl is an heiress--a princess in her own right, and

we--we are not noble. You know what the world would say."

Silvio Rossano glanced at her.

"We are Romans," he said, "of a family as old as the Acorari themselves.

It is true that we are not noble. Perhaps, when we look at some of those

who are, it is as well! But we are not poor, either, Giacinta--not so

poor as to have to be fed by rich American and English adventurers at

the Grand Hotel, like some of your nobles."

Giacinta shrugged her shoulders. "Donna Bianca Acorari is of that

class," she said, quietly.

Silvio instantly flew into a rage. "That is so like a woman!" he

retorted. "Do you suppose I meant to imply that all our nobles are like

that? Each class has its _canaglia_, and the pity of it is that the

foreigners as a rule see more of our _canaglia_ than they do of the

rest, and judge us accordingly. As to Donna Bianca Acorari, we can

leave her name out of the discussion--"

Giacinta laughed. "Scarcely," she said; "but, Silvio _mio_, you must

not be angry. You know that I do not care at all whether people are

noble by birth or whether they are not. All the same, I think you are

preparing for yourself a great deal of mortification; and for that girl,

if you make her care for you, a great deal of unhappiness. You see how

she is isolated. Does anybody, even of their own world, ever come to

visit the princess and Donna Bianca? A few old women come occasionally,

and a few priests--but that is all. Who or what the girl is being kept

for I do not know--but it is certainly not for marriage with one not of

her condition. Besides, except as her _fidanzato_, what opportunity

could you have, or ever hope to have, of seeing her or of knowing what

her feelings might be towards you?"

"And if I know them already?" burst out Silvio.

Giacinta looked grave.

"If you know them already," she said, "it means--well, it means that

somebody has been behaving like an idiot."

"I, for instance!" exclaimed Silvio.

"Certainly, you--before anybody, you. Afterwards--"

"Afterwards--?"

"The woman who dropped the note that you have in your pocket."

"Giacinta!"

"Oh, I am not an imbecile, you know, Silvio. You were waiting for that

woman to come away from her morning's lessons with Bianca, and I do not

suppose it is the first time that you have waited for her--and--and,

what is to be the end of it all, Heaven only knows," concluded Giacinta.

It was a weak conclusion, and she was fully aware of the fact; but a

look on Silvio's face warned her that she had said enough for the

moment.

He took his cigar from his lips and threw it out of the open window.

Then, rising from his chair, he came and stood by his sister.

"I will tell you the end of it," he said, very quietly--and his eyes

seemed to send forth little flashes of light as he spoke. "The end of

it will be that I will marry Bianca Acorari. You quite understand,

Giacinta? Noble or not, heiress or not, I will marry her, and she will

marry me."

"But, Silvio--it is impossible--it is a madness--"

"_Basta_! I say that I will marry her. Have I failed yet in anything

that I have set myself to do, Giacinta? But you," he added, in a

sterner voice than Giacinta had ever heard from him--"you will keep

silence. You will know nothing, see nothing. If the time comes when I

need your help, I will come to you and ask you to give it me, as I would

give it you."

Giacinta was silent for a moment. Then she plucked up her courage to

make one more effort to stem the current of a passion that she felt

would carry Silvio away with it, she knew not whither.

"But the girl," she said, "she is almost a child still, Silvio. Have

you thought what unhappiness you may bring upon her if--if the princess,

and that priest who, they say, manages all her affairs, should prove too

strong for you? You do not know; they might put her in a

convent--anywhere--to get her away from you."

Silvio Rossano swore under his breath.

"_Basta_, Giacinta!" he exclaimed again. "I say that I will marry her."

And then, before Giacinta had time to reply, he suddenly kissed her and

went quickly out of the room.

*V*

Giacinto Rossano was quite mistaken in supposing the piece of paper she

had seen her brother thrust into his pocket to have been still there

when he returned to her after its pretended restoration to its rightful

owner. As a matter of fact, a capricious April breeze was blowing its

scattered remnants about the court-yard of Palazzo Acorari, for Silvio

had torn it into little shreds so soon as he had read the words written

upon it.

She had been perfectly correct, however, in her other suppositions, for

since Silvio had first beheld Donna Bianca in the church of the Sudario

on Christmas night, he had certainly not wasted his time. He had been,

it is true, considerably dismayed at learning from Giacinta who the girl

was who had so immediate and so powerful an attraction for him. Had she

been almost anything else than what she was, he thought to himself

impatiently, the situation would have been a far simpler one; but

between him and the heiress and last remaining representative of the

Acorari, princes of Montefiano, there was assuredly a great gulf fixed,

not in rank only, but in traditional prejudices of caste, in

politics--even, it might be said, in religion--since Bianca Acorari no

doubt implicitly believed all that the Church proposed to be believed,

while he, like most educated laymen, believed--considerably less.

Perhaps the very difficulties besetting his path made Silvio Rossano the

more determined to conquer them and tread that path to the end. What he

had said of himself to his sister, not in any spirit of conceit, but

rather in the confident assurance which his youth and ardent temperament

gave him, was true. When he had set his mind on success, he had always

gained it in the end; and why should he not gain it now?

After all, there were things in his favor. Although he might not be of

noble blood, his family was a good and an old one. There had been

Rossano in Rome before a peasant of the name of Borghese became a pope

and turned his relations into princes. One of these early Rossano,

indeed, had been a cardinal. But, unluckily for the family, he had also

been a conscientious priest and an honest man--a combination rarely to

be met with in the Sacred College of those days.

But there were other things to which Silvio attached more weight--things

of the present which must ever appeal to youth more than those of the

past. His father was a distinguished man; and he himself might

have--nay, would have--a distinguished career before him. Money, too,

was not wanting to him. The professor was not a rich man; but he had

considerably more capital to divide between his two children than many

people possessed who drove up and down the Corso with coronets on their

carriages, while their creditors saluted them from the pavements.

And there were yet other things which Silvio, reflecting upon the wares

he had to go to market with, thought he might fairly take into account,

details such as good character, good health, and--well, for some reason

or other, women had never looked unfavorably upon him, though he had

hitherto been singularly indifferent as to whether they did so or not.

Something--the professor would no doubt have found a scientific

explanation of a radio-active nature for it--told him, even in that

instant when he first met her glance, that Bianca Acorari did not find

him _antipatico_. He wondered very much how far he had been able to

convey to her his impressions as regarded herself.

In an incredibly short space of time it had become absolutely necessary

to him to satisfy his curiosity on this point--hence that sudden desire

to attend the early masses at Santa Maria in Campitelli, which had done

more than anything else to arouse Giacinta's suspicions.

For some weeks, however, Silvio had been absolutely foiled in his

attempts again to find himself near Bianca Acorari. He had very quickly

realized that any efforts on his sister's part to improve her

acquaintance with the girl would be detrimental rather than the reverse

to his own objects, and he had, consequently, soon ceased to urge

Giacinta to make them. But Silvio Rossano had not spent several years

of his boyhood in drawing plans and making calculations for nothing; and

he had set himself to think out the situation in much the same spirit as

that in which he would have grappled with a professional problem

demanding accurate solution.

Occasionally he had caught glimpses of Bianca as she went out driving

with the princess, and once or twice he had seen her walking in the

early morning, accompanied by the same woman who had been with her in

the Sudario. It had been impossible, of course, for him to venture to

salute her, even if he had not fancied that her companion eyed him

sharply, as though suspecting that his proximity was not merely

accidental.

Bettina was probably unconscious that she had been more than once the

subject of a searching study on the part of the _signorino_ of the

second floor, as she called him. But the results of the study were

negative, for Silvio had instinctively felt that any attempt to suborn

Donna Bianca's maid would almost certainly prove disastrous. The woman

was not young enough to be romantic, he thought, with some shrewdness,

nor old enough to be avaricious.

And so he had found himself obliged to discover a weaker point in the

defences of Casa Acorari, and this time fortune favored him; though in

those calmer moments, when scruples of conscience are apt to become so

tiresome, he felt somewhat ashamed of himself for taking advantage of

it.