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Updated: June 12, 2025
The peasant, who had conducted Massetti and your son to the very spot the former had left Rome to seek, was Annunziata's brother. Old Pasquale Solara was absent from home at the time of the arrival of the strangers, but returned shortly afterwards. I have no doubt that he had long been in league with Luigi Vampa and had been secretly acting as his agent and confederate.
That afternoon, seated on the moss, under a tall eucalyptus tree near to Frau Brandt's pavilion, Maria Dolores received a visit from Annunziata. Annunziata's pale little face was paler, her big grave eyes were graver, even than their wont. She nodded her head, slowly, portentously; and her glance was heavy with significance. Maria Dolores smiled. "What is the matter?" she cheerfully inquired.
Annunziata's surpassing loveliness had fired his blood, had driven him to the verge of a reckless action, a crime against this beautiful girl that money could not repair. This crime should not be committed, if he could help it, and he would risk the Viscount's friendship to save him from himself. Giovanni could not marry the humble peasant girl; he should not mar her future.
He bent over Lorenzo's prostrate form, straightened it out and felt in the region of the heart; there was no beat; it was as he had divined Annunziata's manly and generous brother was dead the victim of a cowardly, treacherous assassin and that assassin! oh! he could not think of it and retain his faith in men!
"I shall give this thing a crown of myrtle," said John. "You sometimes say things that sound as if they hadn't any sense," Annunziata informed him, with patient indulgence, nodding at the ceiling. Maria Dolores leaned over the bed, and kissed Annunziata's brow. "Good night, carina," she murmured. Annunziata put up her little white arms, and encircled Maria Dolores' neck.
He could not convince the former flower-girl, he could not even shake her convictions! He had failed with her as Monte-Cristo had previously failed at the Refuge in Civita Vecchia! Up to this time he had continued to hold Annunziata's hand, but now he dropped it as if it had been some venomous serpent. Annunziata was deeply affected, but her emotion arose from an altogether different cause.
"Don't try to change the subject," John interrupted. "Let us cultivate sequence in our ideas. What I am labouring with hammer and tongs to drag from you is the exact date at which, somewhere between the years of our salvation 1387 and 1455, you sat for your portrait to the beatified painter Giovanni of Fiesole. Now, be a duck, and make a clean breast of it." Annunziata's eyes clouded.
But the lady merely laughed. And then, taking Annunziata's chin in her hand, she looked down into her big clear eyes, and said, "I must be off now, to join Signora Brandi. But I cannot leave without telling you how glad I am to have met you, and what pleasure I have derived from your conversation. I hope we shall meet often. Good-bye."
However, he had his compensations. Maria Dolores, whom he had thought never to see again, he saw every day. "Let us hope that you and she may never meet again." In his despairing heart the words became a refrain. But an hour later the news of trouble at the presbytery had travelled to the pavilion, and she flew straight to Annunziata's bedside.
But early next morning, John being still on duty, Maria Dolores came back, booted and spurred for her journey, in tailor-made tweeds, with a little felt toque and a veil: a costume of which Annunziata's eyes were quick to catch the suggestion. "Why are you dressed like that?" she asked, uneasily. "I never saw you dressed like that before. You look as if you were going away somewhere."
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