When, on leaving him, Veronica deposited the traditional and perfunctory kiss upon his sapphire ring, Cardinal Campodonico felt that his late ward had been a match for him at all points, and that after all it was not such a great thing to be a man, if one could not do better than he had done.  If he consoled himself with the fact that Eve had out-argued Adam, he was mentally confronted by the reflexion that Adam had been a layman, and had not been called upon to sustain the dignity of a cardinal and an archbishop.  He determined, however, that he would renew the attempt before long.  If Veronica would not leave Bianca’s villa, and live in some other way, he would oblige his niece to cut the situation short and go away for a journey.

But Veronica had no intention of quartering herself upon her friend for any great length of time; and perhaps, under the circumstances, she did the best thing she could in going directly to her.  Bianca was discreet, and lived very quietly, receiving few people and going very little into the world.  The villa itself was at some distance from the centre of Neapolitan life, so that the average idle man or woman thought twice before calling, without a distinct object, and merely for a cup of tea and a cup-of-tea’s worth of gossip.  There was not that constant coming and going of visitors in every degree of intimacy which might have been expected in the house of a woman of Bianca Corleone’s beauty and position.  The world is easily tired of unhappy people, and men soon weary of worshipping a goddess who never smiles upon them.  As for the fact that Pietro Ghisleri was frequently at the villa, society refrained from throwing stones, in consideration of the extreme brittleness of its own glass dwelling.  Ghisleri was disliked in Naples, because he was a Tuscan; but Bianca, as a Roman, might have been more popular.

It need hardly be said that she preferred the isolation she enjoyed to a gayer existence.  To Veronica it seemed as though she herself had never before known what liberty was.  The whole mode of life was different from anything to which she had been accustomed.  The villa was near the country, and its own grounds were not small.  Bianca was passionately fond of dogs and horses, for her father bred horses on his lands in the Roman Campagna, and she had been accustomed to animals from her childhood.  She taught Veronica to ride, and the fearless young girl was a good pupil.  They rode out together early in the morning, westward, towards Baiae, and up to the king’s preserves, and often through some lands of Veronica’s which lay in the rich Falernian district within an easy distance.  A groom followed them.  Ghisleri very rarely joined the party.