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Updated: June 6, 2025
The Duca della Spina rose painfully to his feet. He seemed quite unconscious of the tears he had shed, and too much shaken to take leave with any formality. Bosio stood quite still, when he had risen too, and his face was white. The old man passed him without a word, going to the door. "My poor son! my poor Gianluca!" he repeated to himself, as Gregorio Macomer accompanied him.
But the answer was there before the question, and she had made up her mind. At the last minute, she had forgotten the flower she had promised to wear, and she sent her maid in haste to see whether she could find one of any sort in the house. It was the middle of December, and it was not probable that such a thing could be found in the Palazzo Macomer. The maid came back empty-handed.
The banker who was managing matters for her advanced the sums necessary out of his private fortune, and the estate at Caserta, together with the Palazzo Macomer in Naples, became the property of Veronica Serra. By the estimates made they were worth more than the money raised upon them by mortgage, and by the deeds of sale the balance was to be paid to Matilde.
She knew the story of Elettra's husband very well, and of how he had been murdered by peasants near Muro in trying to collect the exorbitant rents Macomer had attempted to exact.
Then, too, it was generally believed that Macomer was a miser, and much richer than he allowed any one to suppose. As for the accounts of the estate, they could bear inspection, as Matilde had said, provided that no attempt were made to verify the existence of all the property therein described.
For her part, however, if he chose to consider her middle-aged aunt lovely, Veronica would not contradict him, for she was cautious in a certain degree, and in spite of herself she distrusted her surroundings. There were times when the Countess Macomer inspired her with confidence.
It was perhaps because he was too much attached to Bosio that Matilde Macomer had induced him at last to accept the parish in the mountains with the chaplaincy of the ancestral castle of the Serra, an office which was a total sinecure, as the family had rarely gone thither to spend a few weeks, even in the days of the late prince.
There was Bianca Corleone's look of blank surprise when Veronica had first spoken of a possible marriage with Bosio, and there was Taquisara's bold assertion, tallying with the priest's, that the Macomer wanted her fortune, and there was very vividly before her the gnawing anxiety she had seen in Matilde's face until the latter had caught sight of the artificial flower on that memorable evening.
Before the woman's kiss had been upon his lips two minutes, Bosio Macomer lay dead, alone, under the green-shaded lamp in his own remote room. Peace upon him, if there be peace for such men, in the mercy of Almighty God. He did evil all his life, but there was an evil which even he would not do upon the innocent life of another.
She sat a long time in a deep chair near her toilet table, thinking about her own life, in the great dim room which half a dozen candles barely lighted; and perhaps it was the first time that she had really asked herself how long her present mode of existence was to continue, how long she was to lie half-hidden, as it were, in the sombrely respectable dimness of the Macomer establishment, how long she was to remain unmarried.
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