to the necessity of talking alone with Taquisara, if it could be
helped. She was sure, though she had forgiven him, and liked him better
than before, that she should certainly quarrel with him, though she did
not know why there should be any further disagreement between them.

Possibly she recognized in him a will less despotic than her own, but
quite as unbending when he chose to exercise it. The certainty of strong
opposition, which is fear in cowards, becomes combativeness in brave
people, and the fighting instinct takes the place of the inclination to
run away. But Veronica had no further reason for quarrelling with
Taquisara; and because she liked him, she determined to avoid him as
much as possible, lest at the very first point of difference in
conversation there should be war between them about some insignificant
matter perfectly indifferent to both.

Her guests went to bed early. While Gianluca was before her, Veronica
had not retained the impression she had received from Taquisara, that
her friend was a doomed man. Her own vitality lent the sure certainty of
life, in her imagination, to those about her. He was faint and tired
from the journey, of course, but he was by no means the utterly helpless
invalid she had expected to see, and she had not believed, so long as
she could watch him, that he was in mortal danger. But when she was in
her own room, his face came back to her, a pale shade out of dark
shadow, and she saw the hollows about his deep blue eyes, his thin,
bluish temples, his transparent features, and his emaciated throat, that
seemed to have fallen away under his white ears. She was so suddenly
and violently disturbed by the recollection that she spoke to Elettra of
him. The woman had seen him go by when the party had arrived.

"Do you think that Don Gianluca looks very ill?" Veronica asked.

"Excellency--" the maid hesitated. "I wish that all may live--but he
seems a dead man."

Veronica said nothing, but it was long before she got to sleep that
night, and the vision of his face came again and again to her, pale,
haggard, haunting, distressing her exceedingly. She rose even earlier
than usual.

She did not mean that the presence of her guests should interfere with
what had now become a connected work, to interrupt which would be an
injury to the whole and an injustice to the people who had learned to
expect it of her, looking for more, as she gave them more, and turning
to her in every diffic