either referred to Gianluca, and very little was said about poor Bosio.
It was impossible to talk freely, so soon after his death, and Veronica
was not inclined to tell even her intimate friend of what had happened
on that last night. It had something of a sacred character for her, and
she said prayers nightly before the poor man's photograph, sometimes
with tears.

Now and then Veronica felt so utterly desolate that she made Elettra
come and sit in her dressing-room and sew, merely to feel that there was
something human and alive near her. She enticed the Maltese cat to live
in her rooms as much as possible, for its animal company. She did not
talk with her maid, but it was less lonely to have her sitting there, by
the window.

She supposed that before long the first black cloud of mourning would
lighten a little over the house, and she had been taught at the convent
to be patient under difficulties and troubles. The memory of that
teaching was still near, and in her genuine sorrow, with the youthfully
fervent religious thoughts thereby re-enlivened, she was ready to bear
such burdens and make such sacrifices as might come into her way, with
the assured belief that they were especially sent from heaven for the
improvement of her soul, by the restraint and mortification of her very
innocent worldly desires.

It could hardly have been otherwise. She had not yet loved Bosio, but
her affection had been sincere and of long growth. On the last day of
his life he had become her betrothed husband, and for one hour all her
future living, as woman, wife, and mother, had been bound up with his,
to have being only with him--to disappear in black darkness with his
tragic death, as though he had taken all motherhood and wifehood and
womanhood of hers to the grave forever. As for what Don Teodoro had said
of his having loved Matilde, she believed that less than all the rest,
if possible; and the fact that the priest had said it proved beyond all
doubt to her that he was out of his mind. Beyond that, it had not
prejudiced her against him, for there was a certain noble loftiness in
her character which could largely forgive an unmeant wrong.

In her great loneliness, in that dismal household, the reality of faith,
hope, and charity as the body, mind, and spirit of the truest life, took
hold upon her thoughts, as the mere words and emblems of religion had
not done in her first girlhood. She read for the first time the
Imitation of Ch