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An expedition had been arranged to the valley where some of the Benista family were reported to live, since the snows had departed enough for safety; but this must needs be deferred, and there was no doubt that the "reason why" would be sought out.
There is no certainty that it was valid in the first place, and in the next, nothing is known of Benista since 1865, when he was an old man, so that there is a full chance that he was dead before- " "Before April 1868. I say, Uncle Lance, they want to make no end of a bear-fight for my coming of age. I must be out of the way first." "Don't cry out too soon.
He did find an exceedingly old woman keeping sheep and spinning wool with a distaff, who owned to the name of Cecca Benista. She once had a brother. Yes, Gian was his name, but he went away, as they all did.
Benista was old, very old -the tyrant and assassin that he was, no doubt he was dead. She often thought he would have killed her -and the history of his ill-treatment had to be gone through before it appeared that she had fled from him at Trieste with her brother, in an English trading-vessel, where their dexterity and brilliancy gained them concealment and a passage.
This was certainly in the summer of 1865. Of Benista she knew nothing since, but she believed him to have come from Piedmont. Lance found Gerald walking up and down anxiously watching for him, and receiving him with a "Well!" that had in it volumes of suspense. "Well, Gerald, I do not think there can be any blame attached to your father, whatever comes of it.
She was so unwilling to give particulars that he began almost to hope to make her confess that the whole was a myth, but at last she owned that the man's name was Giovanni Benista, and that the marriage had taken place at Messina; she knew not in what church, nor in what year, only it was before the end of the old regime, for she recollected the uniforms of the Bomba soldiers, though she could not remember the name of the priest.
Thus they felt free to hold themselves engaged, though Gerald had further to tell that his letters from Messina purported that an old priest had been traced out who had married the impresario, Giovanni Benista, a native of Piedmont, to Zoraya Prebel, Hungarian, in the year 1859, when ecclesiastical marriages were still valid without the civil ceremony. "Another step in my descent," said Gerald.
White's workmen, among whom Clement could make inquiries. One young man knew the name of Benista as belonging to a family in a valley beyond his own, but it was not an easily accessible one, and a fresh fall of snow had choked the ravine, and would do so for weeks to come. Yet all was lovely on the coast, and Mr. White having occasion to go to San Remo, offered to take the three girls with him.
The Parrocco was a courteous man, quite a peasant, and too young to know much about the past generation. He gave Clement a refection of white bread, goats' milk cheese, and coffee, and held up his hands on the declining of his thin wine. There was a kind of register of baptisms, and Giovanni Batista Benista was hunted out, and it was found that if alive he would be over seventy years old.
From Trieste I hear that the endeavour of Benista to recover his wife is proved. There's one step of the chain. Is it dragging us down, or setting us free?" "Free- free from the perplexities of property," cried Dolores. "Free to carve out a life." "Certainly I have wished I was a younger son. Only if it could have come in some other way!"
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