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And Gerald, remembering the extraordinary chain of circumstances which had led him to the root of the mystery, could not but acknowledge that, humanly speaking, Vincenza's confidence was justified. "And now you have found this out, what use do you intend to make of it?" asked the Spaniard after a pause.
Cain drew in his oar and sat down. "Let's stay here a while," said he, and they drifted contentedly and talked of this and that, and looked down into the lake, and dipped their hands into the ice-cold water and then looked up again at the clouds. Because the motion of the clouds could be better seen from Vincenza's seat, Cain got up and sat beside her in all simplicity.
The same evening he took his place on the Sacramento train en route for Marysville. When Gerald reached San Luis, the postoffice address of the Ugarte ranch, a disappointment awaited him. Evening was falling, and inquiry elicited the fact that Don Vincenza's residence was still twelve miles distant.
No doubt he had a hand in the plot that has ended so miserably for me and mine, so fortunately for you. "My Brian was nursed by our gardener's wife, a young Italian woman called Vincenza, whose child was about the age of mine. I saw Vincenza's child several times. It was when they were both about two months old that I was seized with a malarious fever, then very prevalent.
"The view that you are, indeed, Brian Luttrell, and not Vincenza's son." "But you said that it was impossible to prove " "I think so, my dear son. But the Cardinal does not agree with me. We shall hear from him further. I believe it is the general opinion at Rome that you ought to be sent to Scotland in order to claim your position and the Luttrell estates. The case might at any rate be tried."
It is to be noted that the Luttrells still learned nothing of the existence of the other baby; they fancied that all Vincenza's children were dead.
But I know nothing positively; I have constructed a theory out of Vincenza's self-contradictions; it may be true; it may be false. Of one thing I would remind you; that as you have given up your position in England and Scotland, you have no responsibility in the matter. You have done exactly what the law would have required you to do had it been proved that you were Vincenza's son."
"Indeed I am not ungrateful, Reverend Father, and I will never wish to be anything but what you want me to be." "Better so," soliloquised the Father, when he had comforted Dino with kind words, and led him away to join the companions that would henceforth be his; "better that he should not wish to rise above the station in which he has been brought up! We shall never prove Vincenza's story.
Luttrell could visit the child from time to time; but as his wife's illness became more serious he saw less and less of the baby, and left it more than ever to Vincenza's care. Vincenza's own children were with their grandmother at a hamlet three miles from San Stefano. The grandmother, generally known as old Assunta, used to bring one or another of them sometimes to see Vincenza.
"As it happened," the narrator went on, "Padre Cristoforo was already interested in the matter, because the mother of Mrs. Luttrell's nurse, Vincenza, had, before her death, confided to him her suspicions, and those of Vincenza's husband concerning the child that she had nursed.
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