loud and many.  For many reasons, she did not wish to insist too much, and she did her best to seem indifferent, keeping her arguments before her mind while she ate.  The chief of them was, indeed, that she clung desperately to the hope of a marriage; but in her heart there was something else, and she knew that she was afraid of Veronica.  It seemed ridiculous, but it was true.  And her husband was even more afraid of the dominating young princess than she.  They never acknowledged the fact to each other, when they exchanged moralities, and discussed Veronica, but each was afraid, and suspected the other of similar cowardice.

The Duchessa did her best to seem indifferent; but now and then, when one of the women changed her plate, or poured something into her glass, she could not help slowly looking round, with an air of bewilderment, as though expecting to see a man in livery at her elbow.

As for Gianluca, Veronica had described in her letters the way in which she lived; and Taquisara’s face more often betrayed amusement than surprise at what he saw in the world.  On the present occasion, having accepted the situation into which his affection for his friend had led him, he had accepted it altogether, and behaved as though he were at a dinner party in Naples, cheerfully making conversation, telling amazing stories of brigandage in Sicily, asking Veronica questions about the surrounding country, and giving such scraps of news about mutual friends as his letters had recently brought him.

Veronica had never seen the man under such circumstances, and she was surprised by his readiness and by his ability to help her in a rather difficult situation.  He said nothing which she could compare with what Gianluca wrote.  He never spoke of himself, and she did not afterwards remember that he had made any very brilliant observation; and yet, when dinner was over, she wished to hear him talk more, just as she had once longed to hear him say again the things he had said to her for Gianluca’s sake in Bianca’s garden.  She had never met any one who seemed to have such a decided personality, without the slightest apparent desire to assert it.  Instinctively, as women know such things, she felt that he was a very manly man, very simple and brave, and vain, if at all, with the sort of vanity which well becomes a soldierly character—­the little touch of willing recklessness that easily stirs woman’s admiration.  What women hate most, next to cowardice, is, perhaps, the caution of the very experienced brave man—­and they hate it all the more because they cannot despise it with any show of reason.