her by sight and were only too ready to come and stand at her stirrup and pour out the tale of their woes, since she was condescending enough to listen.  Sometimes, if she found a case of anything like oppression, she interfered.  Sometimes, and this was what more often happened, she helped some poor man with money—­in order that he might be able to pay his rent to herself.  Bianca laughed once at a charity of this kind, but Veronica held her own.

“The rule is for everybody,” she said.  “They must pay their rents, or go.  If I choose to help those who have had trouble, that is my affair, and not the business of the under-steward with whom they have to do.  Besides, if the rent is remitted this year, they will expect the same thing in the future, whereas they know that a little money is a passing charity on which they cannot count with certainty.  The less publicity there is about charity, the more of self-respect remains to those who profit by it.”

Bianca glanced sideways at Veronica’s face as the latter finished speaking, and she felt that the girl was not cast in the same mould as herself.

“I wonder whether you will ever marry,” she said thoughtfully, after a short pause.

“Why?  What has that to do with it?” asked Veronica.

“Your husband will find that it has a great deal to do with it, my dear,” Bianca answered, with a smile, and speculating upon the possible fate of the Princess of Acireale’s future husband.

“Oh,—­of course, I should not let him interfere in anything of this kind,” said Veronica, gravely.  “He should not come between me and my people.”

She sat very straight on her horse, and the girl’s small head and aquiline features had a dominating expression.  A struggling man, with such a look, is a man who means to win, and generally does, whatever the nature of the race may be.

“But I shall never marry,” Veronica added presently, and her face softened as she thought of the dead betrothed.  “There is plenty to do in the world, without marrying, if one will only do it.”

“If you do not, there will be one free man more in the world,” answered Bianca.

Veronica laughed a little.

“I daresay I should have my own way,” she said.

The longer Veronica stayed with her, the more thoroughly was Bianca convinced of this, and she wondered why it should have taken her so long to discover that the quiet, sallow-faced, gentle-mannered little girl, whom she had first known at the convent school, was developing a character which might some day astonish every one who should attempt to oppose her.  It had been a growth of strength, with an accentuation of wilfulness, and it had not been at all apparent at first.

So they lived quietly together, in spite of the Cardinal Campodonico’s objections and arguments, and, little by little, Veronica became quite used to her absolute independence of plan and action, and the idea of taking an elderly gentlewoman for a companion grew more and more distasteful to her.