So they talked in small, objectless remarks, and questions, and answers, neither witty nor quite witless; but Veronica did not refer to Gianluca, and Taquisara knew that for the present he had better let matters alone.  Presently Bianca spoke across to Veronica, and the conversation became general.  In the course of it, Gianluca spoke to Veronica, and she answered him, and then asked him a question.  She was surprised to find that, so long as the others were joining in whatever was said, he seemed quite at his ease, though his colour came and went frequently.  On the whole, she had a much better impression of him this time than she had retained after the former meeting, when he had seemed so utterly helpless and shy in her presence.  But when both men rose to go away she could not help comparing them again.

Even then, it seemed to her that the comparison was less unfavourable to Gianluca than she had expected that it must be.  He was tall and well-proportioned, and in spite of the slight difficulty in walking, which she had to-day noticed for the first time, he was graceful and of easy carriage.  His extreme languor in moving was, perhaps, what displeased her the most.  When he had entered the room, she had been annoyed at his coming; but now she was rather sorry, than otherwise, that he was going away so soon.  Possibly, as she had expected nothing, she was the more easily satisfied.  Taquisara, too, had disappointed her.  He had talked very much like any one else, and not at all as he had talked at that first meeting.  Veronica felt that she was indifferent.  Bosio’s untimely death had terribly changed the face of the world for her, she thought.

A cold listlessness, unfamiliar to her nature, came over her when the two men were gone.  Before long Ghisleri appeared, and there was tea and more conversation.  He was thought to be an agreeable man, and people said that he talked well.  Veronica wondered vaguely what Bianca saw in him that made her like him so much.  But it struck her that the question had not presented itself to her before that day, and that, on the whole, she liked her friend’s friend very well.

Presently she left them to themselves in the drawing-room and went to her own room to write a long letter to Don Teodoro, who was now in Muro, and actively engaged in carrying out her wishes for improving the condition of the poor there.  As she wrote, her interest in life revived, after having been unaccountably suspended for half an hour, and she felt again all her enthusiasm for the chief object she now had in view.

Soon after this, too, she began to examine the state of the big farms through which she often rode with Bianca, asking questions of the people and entering into conversation with the local under-steward when she chanced to meet him.  As was to be expected, the news that the young princess now took an active interest in the administration of her estates soon went abroad amongst the peasants.  They soon knew