Her invitation was received with mingled astonishment and delight and was duly communicated to Gianluca himself.  Veronica had written to him at the same time, and he had already read her letter telling him of her plan, when his father and mother entered the room where he was lying near his open window, towards evening.  They were good people, and simple, according to their lights, and they were devotedly attached to their eldest son.  The love of Italians for their children often goes to lengths which would amaze northern people.  It may be that where there are few love-matches, as in the old Italian society, the natural ties of blood are stronger than in countries where men leave everything for the women they love.

The Duchessa’s chief preoccupation and anxiety concerned her son’s strength to bear the journey.  From day to day the family had been on the point of moving to Avellino, and the departure had been put off because Gianluca’s condition seemed altogether too precarious.  It would be an even more serious matter to convey him safely to Muro; and between her extreme anxiety for his health, and her wish that he might be able to go, the Duchessa was almost distracted.  But neither she nor her husband knew that the doctors despaired of his life.  The truth had been kept from them, and Taquisara had extracted it from one of the physicians with considerable difficulty, having more than half guessed it during the past two months.

At the mere suggestion of going to Muro, Gianluca had revived, reading Veronica’s letter alone to himself in his room.  When he heard that the invitation had actually come, he seemed suddenly so much better that the tears started to the old Duca’s weak eyes.

“We must go,” said the old gentleman to his wife, as they left Gianluca to consult together.  “What is the use of denying it?  It is passion.  If he does not marry that girl, he will die of it.”

“Of course she means to marry him,” answered the Duchessa, her voice tremulous with nervous delight.  “It is not imaginable that she should ask us to visit her, unless she means that she has changed her mind!  It would be an outrage—­an insult—­it would be nothing short of an abominable action—­I would strangle her with these hands!”

The prematurely old woman shook her weak fingers in the air, and her passionate love for her son lent her feeble features the momentary dignity of righteous anger.

“I should hardly doubt that she would marry him after this,” said the Duca, thoughtfully.  “And besides—­where could she find a better husband?  It is passion that has made him ill.”

But it was not.  In what they said of Veronica’s probable intention they were not altogether wrong, however, from their point of view.  They were in complete ignorance of the long-continued correspondence between her and Gianluca, and had they known of it, they could not possibly have understood her way of looking at the matter.  Such a character as hers was altogether beyond their comprehension, and they practically knew nothing of the circumstances that had lately developed it so quickly.  As for her mode of life, they believed, as most people did, that she had a companion in the person of an elderly gentlewoman whom she had chosen for the purpose among her distant relations.