Society came to the door of the palace and deposited cards, with a pencilled abbreviation for a phrase of condolence, the very shortest shorthand of sympathy.  Veronica looked through them.  All the Della Spina people had come.  She found also Taquisara’s plain cards,—­’Sigismondo Taquisara,’—­without so much as a title, and in the corner were the usual two letters in pencil, strong and clear, but just the same as those on all the others.  Somehow, she knew that she had looked through them all, in order to find his and Gianluca’s.  The letters on the latter’s bit of pasteboard were in a feminine hand—­probably his mother’s.  Veronica’s lip curled a little scornfully, but then she looked suddenly grave—­perhaps he had been too ill to come himself, and if so, she was sorry for him and would not laugh at him.  As for Taquisara, he was so unlike other men, that she had unconsciously expected something different to be visible on his card.

The lonely girl spent as much of her time as possible in reading.  But it was very gloomy.  It rained, too, for days together, which made it worse.  Bianca Corleone came to see her, and they sat a long time together, but neither 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.