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Another was formed, a country dance. Again Maurice was Maddalena's partner. Then came "La Fasola," in which Amedeo proudly showed forth his well-known genius and Gaspare rivalled him. But Maurice thought it was not like the tarantella upon the terrace before the house of the priest. The brilliancy, the gayety of that rapture in the sun were not present here among farewells.
"There's just enough to hold us, if we sit close together. You don't mind that, do you?" "No, signore." "Put your back against the trunk there." He kept his hat off. Over the railway line from the hot-looking sea there came a little breeze that just moved his short hair and the feathers of gold about Maddalena's brow.
Giovanni, his second son, a youth of seventeen, had just been made cardinal. This honour, of vast importance for the Casa Medici in the future, he owed to his sister Maddalena's marriage to Franceschetto Cybo, son of Innocent VIII. The third of Lorenzo's sons, named Giuliano, was a boy of thirteen. Giulio, the bastard son of the elder Giuliano, was fourteen.
"You once lived in Sicily. You once lived in the Casa delle Sirene, beyond the old wall, beyond the inlet. You were there when we were in Sicily, when Gaspare was with us as our servant." Maddalena's lips parted. Her mouth began to gape. It was obvious that she was afraid. "You you knew Gaspare. You knew you knew my husband, the Signore of the Casa del Prete on Monte Amato. You knew him.
Hermione looked searchingly at it until she saw Maddalena's eyes drop before hers suddenly, as if embarrassed. She must say something. But now that she was here she felt a difficulty in opening a conversation, an intense reluctance to speak to this woman into whose house she had almost forced her way. With the son she was strangely intimate. From the mother she felt separated by a gulf.
Maurice could hear their breathing, Maddalena's light and faint, Salvatore's heavy and whistling, and degenerating now and then into a sort of stifled snore. But sleep did not come to Maurice. His eyes were open, and his clasped hands supported his head. He was thinking, thinking almost angrily. He loved joy as few Englishmen love it, but as many southerners love it.
You think I see nothing, signorino, but I saw it all in Maddalena's face. Per Dio!" And he laughed aloud, with the delight of a boy who has discovered something, and feels that he is clever and a man. And Maurice laughed too, not without a pride that was joyous.
Always when she looked troubled, even for an instant, there came to him the swift desire to protect her, to shield her. "But why should you care for me?" he said. "It is better not. For I am going away, and probably you will never see me again." Tears came into Maddalena's eyes. He did not know whether they were summoned by his previous roughness or his present pathos. He wanted to know.
But he had done no real wrong to Salvatore. Nor had he any evil intention with regard to him or his. So far he had only brought pleasure into their lives, his life and Maddalena's pleasure and money. If there had been any secret pain engendered by their mutual intercourse it was his. And this day was the last of their intimacy, though Salvatore and Maddalena did not know it.
"Per Dio!" he exclaimed. Now a deep desire to have his revenge upon Salvatore came to him, but not at all because it would hurt Salvatore. The cruelty had gone out of him. Maddalena's eyes of a child had driven it away. He wanted his revenge only because it would be an intense happiness to him to have it.
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