There could be little doubt but that in the event of an action, Gregorio and Matilde Macomer would be condemned to penal servitude, as the countess herself anticipated.  It was equally certain that if Veronica married any one but Bosio, her husband and his family would demand that the accounts of the estate should be formally audited and the property scheduled; this must ultimately lead to the dreaded prosecution, which could have no possible conclusion but conviction and infamy.

Whatever Bosio’s true relations with Matilde had been in the course of the last ten years, he had at least loved her faithfully, with the complete devotion of a man who not only loves a woman, but is morally dominated by her in all the circumstances of life.  He had not the character which seeks ideals, and he asked for none.

Matilde’s beauty and conversation had sufficed him, for in his opinion he had never known any one to be compared with her; and on her side she had been strong enough to make a slave of him from the first.  To the extent of his weak character and considerable physical courage, there was no sacrifice which Bosio would not have been ready to make for her, and few dangers which he would not at least have attempted to face for her sake.

But where all moral sense of right and all natural action of conscience were gone, there remained in the man an inheritance of traditional feeling, which even Matilde’s influence could not make him wittingly violate any further,—­a remnant of honour, a thread, as it were, by which his soul was still held above the level of total destruction.  There was nothing, perhaps, involving himself alone, which he would have refused to do for Matilde’s sake, under the pressure of her strong will.  But what she required of him now was more than that, and worse.  After a night of thought, he still felt that he could not do it.

Of course, there was the possibility that Veronica herself might absolutely refuse to marry him, and thus save his weakness from the necessity of trying to be strong.  But Bosio thought this improbable.

The fatherless and motherless girl had been purposely kept from all outside influences by Gregorio and Matilde, in order that they might control her disposition for their own interests.  She had been taught to expect that in due time they would select a husband for her from the men who might offer themselves, and that it would be more or less her duty to accept their decision, as being really the best for her own happiness.  They had hindered her from forming friendships with girls of her own age, and altogether from acquaintanceship with young married women, excepting Bianca Corleone, who had been her friend in the convent.  In society, when she went with them, men were introduced to her very rarely.  Bosio had been present once or twice on such occasions, and he remembered having seen her with Gianluca.  It had been very much as Taquisara had described it to Gianluca himself—­a mere