in lonely Muro, she had no other confessor, nor desired any.  Her faults, great and small, were such as she would have acknowledged and discussed with the good man, in her own drawing-room as willingly as in church—­as, indeed, she often did.  But not wishing to be alone with herself any longer on that day, she came down from the tower and went to her room, where she spent an hour with Elettra in examining the state of her very much reduced wardrobe.

“Your Excellency is in rags,” observed the woman.  “You cannot appear in Naples as a bride with any of the things you have.  In the first place, you have scarcely anything that is not black or white.  But also, though some of these clothes had a cheerful youth, their old age is very sad.”

Veronica laughed at Elettra’s way of expressing herself, and they went over all the wardrobe together that afternoon.

As Taquisara saw how those around him seemed to have recovered from the terrible emotions through which they had passed, and how the life in the castle quickly subsided again to its monotonous level and ran on in its old channel, the temptation to solve all difficulties by letting matters alone presented itself to him with considerable force.  Ten days had gone by, and he had not once found himself alone with Don Teodoro.  When they met, they avoided each other’s eyes, and each remained separately face to face with the same trouble, while each had a trouble of his own with which the other had nothing to do.

There was little or no change now from what had formerly been the daily round.  Again, as before, Taquisara carried his friend daily from his own room to the large one in which Veronica and the Sicilian again fenced almost every day.  Sometimes, when it was fine and warm, Gianluca was taken out upon the balcony for a couple of hours.  He no longer suffered in being moved; but his lower limbs were now completely paralyzed.  He hardly thought of the fact, in his constant and increasing happiness.  It was only when he saw the fencing that he sometimes looked down sadly at his useless legs and thin hands, for fencing was the only exercise for which he had ever cared.  He had none of that sanguine vitality which would have made such an existence intolerable to Taquisara, or even to Veronica.  With her beside him, or if he could not have her, with books or conversation, he was not only contented, but happy.  It must be remembered, too, that he was not aware that his condition was hopeless and that he might live a total cripple for many years to come.  If he had known that, he might have been less gay; not knowing it, married to the woman he loved and looking forward to complete recovery, life was little short of a paradise within sight of a heaven.

Veronica never tired of taking care of him, and one might have supposed that she was satisfied with the prospect of nursing him all her life, or all his.  But she herself by no means believed the doctor’s predictions.  She had been too sure that he was to die, and too much surprised and delighted by his recovery, to accept on mere faith of any man’s verdict the assurance that he was never to walk again.  There was the reaction, too, after the strong emotion and the heart-rending anxiety, the relaxation of mind and nerve, and the willingness to be happy again after so much strain and stress.