The girl’s face was white and grave now, for Taquisara spoke in earnest.

“How dreadful!” she exclaimed.

Bianca turned her head, for she was not so much absorbed in her conversation with Ghisleri as not to have noticed that Veronica and Taquisara were speaking almost in whispers, which was strange conduct for a young girl with a mere acquaintance, to say the least of it.

“What is so dreadful?” she asked, with a smile.

“Oh!—­nothing,” answered Veronica, glancing at her, and turning back instantly to Taquisara.

A shade of annoyance was in his face, and Veronica felt suddenly that this was the first real crisis in her life, and that she must hear all he had to say, to the end, at any cost of propriety.

“Come!” she said to Taquisara.

She rose as calmly as a married woman, many years older than she, might have done, and Taquisara was on his feet at the same moment.  She led the way down to the marble steps that descended to the sea, and stood on the uppermost one, looking out.  Bianca and Ghisleri watched her in surprise and Bianca made a slight movement, as though to follow, but then leaned back again.  There was then, and still is, a very strong feeling in Southern Italy against allowing a young girl to be out of earshot with a man.

Though Bianca and Veronica had been children, together, and there was little difference of age between them, Bianca felt that, as the married woman, she was responsible for the observance of social custom.  But in a moment she realized that Taquisara was talking of Gianluca, and that anything would be better than to allow Veronica to marry Bosio Macomer.

“I understand,” she said to Ghisleri; “let them alone.  It is better, so long as only you and I see it.”

Down by the steps, Veronica stood very still, looking out over the blue water, and Taquisara was beside her.  She waited for him to speak again, sure that he had not said all.

“Such things seem improbable in these days,” he said quietly.  “You say that it is dreadful.  It is.  I have seen it, and have been with him day after day.  I am not very sensitive, as a rule, but I have had a strange impression which I shall never forget.  Gianluca and I met when we were serving our time as volunteers.  He was unlike the rest of us, even then.  That was why we became friends—­because he was unlike me, I suppose.”

“Unlike—­in what way?” asked Veronica, still looking at the sea.

“It is hard to explain.  He is a man of ideals, a religious man, a good man.”  Taquisara smiled gravely.  “That was enough to make him quite different from us all, was it not?”

“I do not know,” said the young girl.  “Are all men bad, as a rule?”

“Perhaps,” answered the Sicilian, shortly.  “At all events, Gianluca was not.  One saw that all the little that was bad in his life was only a jest, while all the much that was good was real and true.”