or five days to reach Muro, by easy stages, and
there was plenty of time to make preparations for receiving the party.
After the letter had come, Veronica spoke to Don Teodoro, who had
noticed her extreme preoccupation and was wondering what could have
happened.

"I think I understand," he said, looking at her quietly. "It is
right--you are young, but the years pass very quickly."

"What do you mean?" asked Veronica, whose sad face still puzzled him.

"What can their coming mean?" he asked, in reply, with a smile.

"What? It is I who do not understand--or you--or both of us. Don
Gianluca and I are friends. He is very, very ill. The doctors say that
he cannot live many months, and unless I see him now, I shall never see
him again."

The old priest gazed at her in distressed surprise, and for a long time
he found nothing to say. Veronica remained silent, scarcely conscious of
his presence, leaning back in her chair, with folded hands and sorrowful
eyes. The thought that Gianluca was to die was becoming more and more
unceasingly painful, day by day. The fact that he wrote regularly to
her, and yet never spoke of his condition, made it worse; for it proved
to her that he could be brave rather than knowingly increase her
anxiety, and the suffering of a brave man gets more true sympathy from
women than the cruel death of many cowards.

"I think you are very rash," said Don Teodoro, gravely, breaking the
silence at last.

Veronica turned upon him instantly, with wide and gleaming eyes, amazed
at the slightest sign of opposition, criticism, or advice.

"Rash!" she exclaimed. "Why? Have I not the right to ask whom I please,
and will, to stay under my own roof? Who has authority over me, to say
that I shall have this one for a friend, or that one, old or young? Am I
a free woman, or a schoolgirl, or a puppet doll, to which the world can
tie strings to make me dance to its silly music? Rash! What rashness is
there in asking my friend and his father and mother here? My dear Don
Teodoro, you will be telling me before long that I should take some
broken-down old lady for a companion!"

"I have sometimes wondered that you do not send for one of your
relations," said the priest, who, mild as he was, could not easily be
daunted when he believed himself right.

"I will make my house a refuge, or a hospital if need be, for our poor
people," answered Veronica, "but not for my relations, whom I have never
seen. I send them money