ated, these men would naturally continue to send the rents
to the order of Gregorio Macomer.

Feeling that he was near the end of his chances, he had desperately
attempted to improve his position by using as much of the year's income
as he could extract from the stewards, in a final speculation. This had
failed. He had not been able to pay the interest on his mortgages, and
the ready money was all gone. A disastrous financial crisis had
supervened, which had made itself felt throughout the country, and the
banks which held the mortgages had given notice that they would
foreclose some of them, and not renew the others. If Gregorio Macomer
could have laid hands, no matter how, on any sum of money worth
mentioning, he would have fled, under an assumed name, to the Argentine
Republic, the usual refuge of Italians in difficulties. But he had
exhausted all he could touch, had gambled, and had lost it. If he fled
now, it must be as a penniless emigrant. As he had no taste for such
adventures, at his age, there was but one chance for him, and that lay
in somehow getting control of Veronica's fortune before the end of the
month. As for getting any more of the income, in time to be of any use
in staving off the tidal wave of ruin that rose against him, there was
no chance of that. The farmers all over the country paid their quarter's
rents on the first of January, or should do so, but there was often
difficulty in collecting, and the money would not really get to
Macomer's hands much before February. By that time all would be over;
and it was not the idea of bankruptcy which frightened Gregorio; it was
the certainty that a declaration of bankruptcy must lead to, and
involve, a minute examination into his past transactions which had led
to it.

Matilde knew all the truth, as has been shown. What she suffered in
remaining in Naples, in going and coming through the familiar rooms, in
spending her evenings in that room, of all others, in which she had last
seen Bosio alive, no one knew. She went about silently, and her face
grew daily paler and thinner. In her behaviour she was subdued and
silent, though she treated Veronica with greater consideration than
before. They had never spoken together of the possible reasons for
Bosio's death, but it had been publicly stated that he had been insane,
and Matilde, to all appearances, accepted the explanation as sufficient.
It was made the more reasonable by the evident fact that Gregorio's m