United States or Argentina ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Do you call me practical for speaking in this way? Very well, then I am practical. I tell you what I know." Gianluca was amused, but he thought over what Taquisara had advised him to do, and the more he thought about it, the more inclined he was to follow the advice.
He would have admitted that Veronica might not like Taquisara, but that any one in the world should not like Veronica was beyond his comprehension. He spoke to his friend about it when they were alone. "What is the matter between you and Donna Veronica?" he asked that evening, before dinner. "Nothing," answered Taquisara, stopping in his walk. "What do you mean."
It was a grim farce to write about her streets and her houses and her charities to a man who was dying and who loved her. Yet she could not speak of his illness without letting him know that Taquisara had informed her of it. She tried to go on, and stopped again. Poor Gianluca he was so young! All at once her pity overflowed unexpectedly, and she felt the tears in her eyes and on her cheeks.
Veronica's women had brought Gianluca wine, and his mother was giving him certain drops of a stimulant in a glass of fragrant old malvoisie, while his father bent over him anxiously, still asking useless questions. Veronica beckoned Taquisara aside, and they stood together behind Gianluca's chair.
Taquisara had very fairly described the latter's position to her that morning as that of an insignificant poor gentleman, in no point of name or fortune the superior of five hundred others, and who might naturally be supposed to covet the dignities and the wealth which Veronica could confer upon him.
"Taquisara has been with him to-day, and Pietro Ghisleri but Taquisara is his best friend. You know Taquisara, do you not?" "A Sicilian?" asked the countess, encouraging the old man to go on. "Yes," said Macomer, answering for the Duca, for he was proud of his genealogical knowledge, "The only son of the old Baron of Guardia. But every one calls him Taquisara, though his father is dead.
No man is to be despised because a woman does not love him. It is not his fault." "I feel as though it were," said Gianluca. "I am sure that if I could change, if I could make myself different in some way but that is absurd, of course." "One cannot suddenly become some one else." For himself, without vanity, Taquisara was probably glad of the fact, but he was sincerely sorry for his friend.
On the steps of love's temple, at the very threshold, the one lay half dead, never to rise again; and beside him stood the other, in the pride and glory of the morning of life. It would have been hard, even if the contrast had been less strong to the eye, and the distance of the two souls greater one from the other even if Taquisara had not been what he was.
She raised hers, saluted him, and then Gianluca, as though they were to fence a bout for a prize. Taquisara did the same. "Oh!" he exclaimed, in surprise, as both were about to fall into guard. "Are you left-handed?" "Yes did you never notice it?" She laughed again, as her foil played upon his for a second. "Now then!" she cried.
"I have a violent headache. But I am wholly at your service. In what can I be of use to you?" Taquisara found himself in an awkward position. He had expected to find Bosio Macomer radiant and ready to be congratulated by any one who chose to knock at his door. Instead, he found a man apparently both ill and distressed. He hesitated a moment, for he knew Bosio but slightly, after all.
Word Of The Day