United States or British Indian Ocean Territory ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
She did not finish the sentence, for it seemed to her selfish to throw her right to happiness into the scale against Gianluca's life. But she could not understand him. "It is hard to do, for all that," he answered indistinctly. "I have said too much," he continued, stopping before her. "I meant to do the best I could. Perhaps I should have said nothing. This is no time to stop at trifles.
After all, though he had insulted her, she liked Taquisara for the whole-hearted way in which he took Gianluca's part in everything. There was that statement, and she felt that it was a true one. Gianluca was more to her than any one she knew, in a way which no one could understand, and she had a right to see him before he died. If, by any happy chance, he should live, people might perhaps talk.
If he had not loved her, or if she had thought that he did not, she would have had the pride to tear her heart clean from love's terrible hands, whole or broken, as might be, and to toss it, with the dead dull weeks into old time's sack of irrevocably lost and useless things, and so to live her life out, loveless, in the still haven of Gianluca's friendship.
Veronica left Bianca Corleone's house with a very painful sense of disappointment, and as she drove homeward through the wet streets, she could not get rid of Gianluca's tearful blue eyes, which seemed to follow her into the carriage; and in the rattling and jolting, she heard again and again that one weak sob which had so disturbed her.
"As often as you can I count on it! Of course!" Gianluca's thin, pale face brightened suddenly as he heard her vehement request and the anxiety in her tone. "Thank you," he said. "Good-bye." He shook hands with Bianca, nodded to the two men, and turned away towards the door.
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.
It was still very early, when the professor appeared and paid him a long visit, asking a few questions at first and then suddenly, beginning to talk of politics and the public news. Taquisara left the room with him, and they stood together in Gianluca's sitting-room. "He is better, is he not?" asked the Sicilian, eagerly. To his surprise the doctor shook his head and was silent a long time.
She laid the letter in the drawer where she kept Gianluca's, but in a separate corner, by itself. Then she took up her pen to write to Gianluca, intending to take up the daily written conversation at the point where she had last broken off, on the previous evening. With an effort, she wrote a few words, and then stopped short and leaned back in her chair, staring at the tapestry.
Bianca knew from Ghisleri that Gianluca's father had done his best to bring about the marriage. She was amazed to find that Veronica knew nothing of the negotiations. "It is very strange," she said thoughtfully, and hesitating as to how much she should tell of what she had heard. "What is strange?" asked the young girl. "That you should not have known about Gianluca. They go to see him every day.
She found also Taquisara's plain cards, 'Sigismondo Taquisara, without so much as a title, and in the corner were the usual two letters in pencil, strong and clear, but just the same as those on all the others. Somehow, she knew that she had looked through them all, in order to find his and Gianluca's. The letters on the latter's bit of pasteboard were in a feminine hand probably his mother's.
Word Of The Day