of your duties can for
once be performed by others. It is not only important, but imperative
that you should go to Avellino on my errand. I want you to take this
with you," and I tapped a small square iron box, heavily made and
strongly padlocked, which stood an the table near me.

He glanced at the box, but still hesitated, and the gloom on his
countenance deepened. I grew a little annoyed.

"What is the matter with you?" I said at last with some sternness. "You
have something on your mind--speak out!"

The fear of my wrath startled him. He looked up with a bewildered pain
in his eyes, and spoke, his mellow Tuscan voice vibrating with his own
eloquent entreaty.

"Eccellenza!" he exclaimed, eagerly, "you must forgive me--yes, forgive
your poor servant who seems too bold, and who yet is true to you--yes,
indeed, so true!--and who would go with you to death if there were
need! I am not blind, I can see your sufferings, for you do suffer,
'lustrissimo, though you hide it well. Often have I watched you when
you have not known it. I feel that you have what we call a wound in the
heart, bleeding, bleeding always. Such a thing means death often, as
much as a straight shot in battle. Let me watch over you, eccellenza;
let me stay with you! I have learned to love you! Ah, mio signor," and
he drew nearer and caught my hand timidly, "you do not know--how should
you?--the look that is in your face sometimes, the look of one who is
stunned by a hard blow. I have said to myself 'That look will kill me
if I see it often.' And your love for this great lady, whom you will
wed to-morrow, has not lightened your soul as love should lighten it.
No! you are even sadder than before, and the look I speak of comes ever
again and again. Yes, I have watched you, and lately I have seen you
writing, writing far into the night, when you should have slept. Ah,
signor! you are angry, and I know I should not have spoken; but tell
me, how can I look at Lilla and be happy when I feel that you are alone
and sad?"

I stopped the flood of his eloquence by a mute gesture and withdrew my
hand from his clasp.

"I am not angry," I said, with quiet steadiness, and yet with something
of coldness, though my whole nature, always highly sensitive, was
deeply stirred by the rapid, unstudied expressions of affection that
melted so warmly from his lips in the liquid music of the mellow Tuscan
tongue. "No, I am not angry, but I am sorry to have been the object o