came Bianca's writing was full of her own desperate sadness, though
there were words of congratulation for Veronica, such as the occasion
seemed to require. Bianca wrote from a remote corner of Sicily, where
she was living almost alone on her husband's principal estate. There had
been trouble. Corleone had suddenly taken it into his head to come home
for a few weeks. Then Bianca's brother, Gianforte Campodonico, had
appeared and had taken a violent dislike to Pietro Ghisleri, so that
Bianca feared a quarrel between them. Before anything had happened, she
had induced Ghisleri to go to Switzerland, and she herself had gone to
Sicily, whither her brother had accompanied her. But he had been obliged
to leave her soon afterwards, and she suspected that he had followed
Ghisleri to the north in order to pick a quarrel with him. She was very
unhappy, and there was much more about herself in her letter than about
Veronica's marriage.

The old couple grew daily more anxious to leave for Avellino. They
proposed that as soon as Gianluca could safely travel, the whole party
should go there together. Before returning to Naples for the winter, the
legal formalities of the municipal wedding could be fulfilled, and the
marriage should then be formally announced. Gianluca and Veronica would
come and spend the winter in the Della Spina palace, wherein, as in all
Italian patriarchal establishments, there was a spacious apartment for
the establishment of the eldest son whenever he should marry.

Once, when this was discussed before them, Taquisara met Don Teodoro's
eyes, and the two men looked steadily at each other for several seconds.
But even after that they avoided a meeting. It did not seem absolutely
necessary yet, and each knew that the other had not yet found the
solution of the difficulty. To every one's surprise, Gianluca opposed
the plan altogether. They all seemed to have taken it for granted that
he need not be consulted, and Veronica, in her complete self-sacrifice,
would have been willing to do whatever pleased the rest. But Gianluca
quietly refused to go to Avellino at all. So long as his wife would give
him hospitality, he said with a proud smile, he would stay in Muro.
After that, he should prefer to return directly to Naples. It was not
easy to argue against an invalid's prerogative. After some fruitless
attempts to move him, his father and mother temporarily desisted.

"You shall not go to Avellino," he said to Veronica