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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.
"Go up; and send Adone to me." "He is perhaps asleep, sir; he came across the water at dawn." "If so, wake him. I must speak to him without delay." Gianna went and came down quickly. "He is gone out to work in the fields, sir. Madama told me so. If he does not work, the land will go out of cultivation, sir." "He may have gone to Nerina?" "I do not think so, sir.
"Can you manage them, little one?" "Oh, yes; they love me." "Go then; but take care." "She is a good child!" said Gianna. "The beasts won't hurt her. They know their friends." Clelia Alba, to whom her own and her son's dignity was dear, said nothing of her own displeasure and surprise at Adone's absence. But she was only the more distressed by it.
"Is she ill?" he cried, as he reached the bank of his own land. "No; she is well in health," answered Gianna, "but she is sorely grieved and deeply angered; she found the girl Nerina going out at the dead of night." Adone changed colour. He was silent. Gianna came close to him. "The child and you both out all night, heaven knows where! What but one thing can your mother think?"
"Maybe she is amongst the hay," thought Gianna, and painfully she climbed the wide rungs of the ladder which led to the hay loft. There, sure enough, was Nerina, sound asleep upon the fodder. She looked very small, very young, very innocent. The old woman thought of the first day that she had seen the child asleep on the stone bench by the porch; and her eyes grew dim.
He struck a match and went up to his room, and threw himself, dressed, upon his bed. His mother was listening for his return, but she did not call to him. She knew he was a man now, and must be left to his own will. "What ails Adone that he is not home?" had asked old Gianna. Clelia Alba had been herself perturbed by his absence at that hour, but she had answered:
"Nay, sir; what Edera takes it keeps. He dropped where he knew it was deepest." As the vicar returned up the village street there was not a soul to give him greeting except old Gianna, who kneeled weeping at his feet. The people poured out of their doorways, but they said not a word of welcome. The memory of Adone was an idolatry with them, and Adone had said that their priest had betrayed them.
Two little pug-dogs which Gianna was nursing in her lap began to bark when I gaily saluted the company. "All was going on very nicely; we were traversing the last stage of the journey, when my steed all at once conceived the idea that it was high time to be returning homewards.
Don Silverio listened with pain and indignation. "What is he about to risk a female child on such errands? And why is his mother in such vehement haste to say cruel words and think unjust and untrue things?" "They are unjust and untrue, sir, are they not?" said Gianna.
"They are bringing the lads in from the moors." And Gianna shrieked, "Adone! They have got Adone!" Don Silverio sprang to his feet. "Adone! Have you taken Adone Alba?" "The ringleader! By Bacchus! Yes," cried the brigadier, with a laugh. "He will get thirty years at the galleys. Your flock does you honour, Reverendissimo!"
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