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Updated: June 17, 2025
She would then be legally married to Gianluca, while in the eyes of the Church she was already Taquisara's wife, by the fact of form though not by the intention of any one. It did not occur either to Taquisara or to the priest that they could keep their secret forever and allow matters to proceed to such a conclusion.
Taquisara's arm was around him, and the Sicilian's face was quiet and unconcerned, but Veronica saw the straining of the brown hand that supported the tall invalid, and she knew that Gianluca could not have stood alone. But he would not let the servants come near him.
Gianluca thanked her, smiling too, and the impression any one would have had was that they thoroughly understood each other. He bowed again and went out. Veronica turned to come back to the tea-table and found herself facing Taquisara's fiery eyes. She was surprised, and looked into his face, very near to him, and waiting for him to stand aside.
"I do not know whether you will think it strange that I should come," he said, and his square face grew more square as he looked straight at Bosio. "I am Gianluca della Spina's best friend." "Ah! Yes I think I have heard so," answered Bosio, not startled, but considerably disturbed, as his gentle eyes met Taquisara's bold glance.
The friend whom he sought, high up in the city, in a luxurious, sunlit room overlooking the harbour and the wide bay, was as unlike him as one man could be unlike another white, fair-haired, delicate, with soft blue eyes and silken lashes, and a passive hand that accepted the pressure of Taquisara's rather than returned it the pale survival of another once conquering race.
Gianluca, naturally sensitive and abnormally impressionable, hated to be touched by servants, as some invalids do, and Taquisara's constant presence saved him much suffering, none the less acute because it was imaginary.
She thought again with anger of Taquisara's extraordinary conduct, for she was positively sure that she was not playing with his friend in any sense of the word. The very suggestion would have been insulting, if he had made it in the most carefully guarded and tactful language. As he had put it, it had been nothing short of outrageous.
He really felt a little better, and by Taquisara's care had suffered less than usual in the moving. His father and mother had been in to see him as usual, before he was up, and before they went out for their daily walk. Veronica would not come yet, but he had the true invalid's pleasure in anticipating the coming of a well-loved woman.
Whatever reasons he had of his own for not wishing to comply with Taquisara's request, he overcame them and faithfully carried out the mission imposed upon him. In itself it was no very hard one. Gianluca was a religious man, as Taquisara had said that he was, and he knew that he was very ill, though he did not believe himself to be dying.
It was no wonder that she turned a deaf ear to Taquisara's warning, which, as coming from Gianluca's friend, seemed calculated purposely to influence her against marrying Bosio.
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