The count had told her that when she wished it, he was ready to render an account of the estates and would be happy to explain everything to her at length.  She understood nothing of business and was content to accept the roughest statement as he chose to give it to her.  She was far too young to distrust the man whom she had been taught to respect as her guardian and as a person of scrupulous honesty.  She was completely in his power, and she was accustomed to ask him for any little sums she needed.  It never really struck her that he might misuse the authority she indifferently left in his hands.

It was her aunt who had induced her to make the will, and for whose conduct she felt a sort of undefined resentment and contempt.  Considering, she thought, how improbable it was that she herself should die before Matilde Macomer, the latter had shown an absurd anxiety about the disposal of the fortune.  If Veronica had yielded the point, she had done so in order to get rid of an importunity which wearied her perpetually.  She was to marry, of course, in due time.  God would give her children, and they would inherit her wealth.  It was really ridiculous of her aunt to be so anxious lest it should all go to those distant relations in Sicily and Spain.  Nevertheless, in order to have peace, she signed the will, and her aunt thanked her effusively, and old Macomer’s flat lips touched her forehead while he spoke a few words of gratified approval.

In the evening she told Bosio, the count’s brother, of what she had done.  His gentle eyes looked at her thoughtfully for a few seconds, and he did not smile, nor did he make any observation.

A few minutes later he was talking of a picture he had seen for sale—­a mere sketch, but by Ribera, called the Spagnoletto.  She made up her mind to buy it for him as a surprise, for it pleased her to give him pleasure.

But when she was alone in her room that night she recalled Bosio’s expression when she had told him about the will.  She was sure that he was not pleased, and she wondered why he had not at least said something in reply—­something quite indifferent perhaps, but yet something, instead of looking at her in total silence, just for those few seconds.  After all, she was really more intimate with him than with her aunt and uncle, and liked him better than either of them, so that she had a right to expect that he should have answered with something more than silence when she told him of such a matter.

She sat a long time in a deep chair near her toilet table, thinking about her own life, in the great dim room which half a dozen candles barely lighted; and perhaps it was the first time that she had really asked herself how long her present mode of existence was to continue, how long she was to lie half-hidden, as it were, in the sombrely respectable dimness of the Macomer establishment, how long she was to remain unmarried.  Knowing the customs of her own people