Don Teodoro came to her, soon after Taquisara had left him, to tell her that he must go to Naples without delay.  She looked at him in astonishment at the proposal, and as she looked, she saw that his face was changed.  Oddly enough, he held himself much more erect than usual; but his features were drawn down as though by much suffering, and his eyes, usually so clear and steady, wandered nervously about the room.

“You are not well,” said Veronica.  “Why must you go now?”

“It is because I must go now that I am not well,” answered the priest, shaking his head.  “I am very sorry to be obliged to leave you at this time.  I only hope that, if you are thinking of fulfilling the legal formalities of your marriage, you will give me notice of the fact, so that I may come back, if I can.  You know that all that concerns you concerns my life.”

Veronica looked at him, and wondered why he was so much disturbed.  But his words gave her an opportunity of speaking to him about her own decision.  She did not wish him to think her capricious, much less to imagine that she looked upon the marriage as a mere piece of sentiment, which was not to change her life at all, except to bind her as a nurse to the bedside of a hopeless invalid.  That idea itself was beginning to be repugnant to her, and the hope that Gianluca might recover was becoming a necessary part of her happiness, though she scarcely knew it.

“My dear Don Teodoro,” she said, “so far as that is concerned, you may be quite sure that I will let you know in time.  I have not the slightest intention of fulfilling any legal formalities until my husband is well enough to stand on his feet with me before the syndic; and I am afraid that he will not be well enough for that in less than a month, at the earliest.”

The wandering eyes suddenly fixed themselves on her face, the strange great features relaxed, and the wide, thin lips smiled at her.  His happiness was strangely founded, but it was genuine, though not altogether noble.  Her words were a reprieve; and he could keep his secret longer, almost, perhaps, until he died, and when he should be dying, it would be easier to tell.  But that was far from being all.  He loved her, as the source of great charity and kindness from which the people were drawing life, with all his own passionate charity; and he loved her for herself, for her gentleness and her hardness, because she ruled him, and because she touched his heart.  All other thoughts away, he could not bear to think of her as bound for life to be the actual wife of a helpless cripple.

And something of her own heart he half guessed and half knew.  For in her innocence she had confessed to him how she had thought of Taquisara, when she had been alone that day, and how the blood had flowed in her face, and burned her so that she was almost sure that such thoughts must be wrong.  It was because she had told him these things that he had watched Taquisara ever since, and he had seen that the man loved her silently.