As Gianluca’s general health improved, the Duca and Duchessa began to speak of an early departure for their own place near Avellino.  Their eldest son’s illness had placed him first with them, but they had several other children, all of whom had been under the care of a sister of the Duchessa during the latter’s stay at Muro.  The motherly woman was beginning to be anxious about them, and the old gentleman had a fair-haired little daughter of eleven summers, whom he especially loved and longed to see.

They thought that before long Gianluca might be moved.  It was growing colder, day by day, in the first chill of early autumn, and they believed that a little warmth would do him good.  Veronica should come and pay them a visit, and Taquisara, too.

As for the marriage, they meant that it should be an open secret for a little while longer.  The servants knew of it, and would tell other servants of course, and the Duchessa had written of it to her sister, on hearing which fact Veronica had written to Bianca Corleone, telling her exactly what had happened, lest Bianca should hear of it from some one else.  It was long before she had an answer to this letter, and when it came Bianca’s writing was full of her own desperate sadness, though there were words of congratulation for Veronica, such as the occasion seemed to require.  Bianca wrote from a remote corner of Sicily, where she was living almost alone on her husband’s principal estate.  There had been trouble.  Corleone had suddenly taken it into his head to come home for a few weeks.  Then Bianca’s brother, Gianforte Campodonico, had appeared and had taken a violent dislike to Pietro Ghisleri, so that Bianca feared a quarrel between them.  Before anything had happened, she had induced Ghisleri to go to Switzerland, and she herself had gone to Sicily, whither her brother had accompanied her.  But he had been obliged to leave her soon afterwards, and she suspected that he had followed Ghisleri to the north in order to pick a quarrel with him.  She was very unhappy, and there was much more about herself in her letter than about Veronica’s marriage.

The old couple grew daily more anxious to leave for Avellino.  They proposed that as soon as Gianluca could safely travel, the whole party should go there together.  Before returning to Naples for the winter, the legal formalities of the municipal wedding could be fulfilled, and the marriage should then be formally announced.  Gianluca and Veronica would come and spend the winter in the Della Spina palace, wherein, as in all Italian patriarchal establishments, there was a spacious apartment for the establishment of the eldest son whenever he should marry.