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She had seen that something was wrong, but she could not guess what: something which made Madonna Clelia's brows dark, and Gianna's temper bad, and Adone himself weary and ill at ease. Seeing him sitting there, not eating, throwing his bread to some wild pigeons which followed the plough, she plucked up courage to speak; he was always kind to her, though he noticed her little.
When he went back to his house that evening, with his great net on his shoulder and swinging in one hand some fresh-water fish, he looked at the stone bench, which was empty of all except some fallen rose-leaves, and then anxiously, questioningly, in the face of his mother. So he answered the regard. "The girl is gone to Gianna's custody," she said rather harshly.
Only Clelia Alba thought, "Perhaps Gianna's good heart misleads her. Gianna is rough; but she has a heart as tender at bottom as a ripe melon's flesh." Anyhow, she took her old servant's word and allowed the child to remain. She could not bring herself to turn adrift a female thing to stray about homeless and hungry, and end in some bottomless pit. The child might be the devil's spawn.
Gianna's heart was hard against Adone; in a dim way she understood the hopes and the schemes which occupied him, but she could not forgive him for sacrificing to them his mother and this friendless child. It was so like a man, she said to herself, to tear along on what he thought a road to glory, and never heed what he trampled down as he went never heed any more than the mower heeds the daisies.
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