“On the market-place all the huckstresses talk to me about you, with the idea of flattering me.  They assure me we’d make a wonderful couple.  My kitchen woman seizes every opportunity to tell me how handsome you are.  You ought to thank her....  Even my aunt, my poor aunt, with one leg in the grave, drew it out the other day to say to me:  ’Do you notice that Rafael visits us quite frequently?  Do you think he wants to marry you?’ Marry, you see!  Ha, ha, ha!  Marry!  That’s all poor auntie can see in the world for a woman!”

And she went on gaily chattering like a wild bird escaped from a cage and happy at its liberty, though her frank, mocking laughter was in strange contrast with the expression of sinister determination on Rafael’s face.

“But how glum and queer you look today!  Are you ill?...  What’s the matter?”

Rafael took advantage of this opening.  Ill, yes!  Sick with love!  He knew the whole place was gossiping about them.  But it wasn’t his fault.  He simply couldn’t hide his feelings.  If she only realized what that mute adoration was costing him!  He had tried to root the thought of her out of his mind, but that had been impossible.  He must see her, hear her!  He lived for her alone.  Study?  Impossible!  Play, with his friends?  They had all become obnoxious to him!  His house was a cave, a cellar, a place to eat in and sleep in.  He left it the moment he got out of bed, and kept away from the city, too, which seemed stuffy, oppressive, like a jail to him.  Off to the fields; to the orchards, to the Blue House where she lived!  He would wait and wait for afternoon to come—­the time when, by a tacit arrangement neither of them had proposed, he might enter her orchard and find her on the bench under the four dead palms!...  Well, he could not go on living that way.  Poor folks envied him his power, because he was a deputy, at twenty-five!  And yet his one purpose in life was to be ... well, she could guess what ... that garden bench, for instance, gently, deliciously burdened with her weight for whole afternoons; or that needlework which played about in her soft fingers; or one of her servants, Beppa, perhaps, who could waken her in the morning, bend low over her sleeping head, and smooth the loose tresses spread like rivulets of gold over the white pillow.  A slave, an animal, a thing even, provided it should be in continuous contact with her person—­that was what he longed to be; not to find himself obliged, at nightfall, to leave her after a parting absurdly prolonged by childish pretexts, and return to his irritating, common, vulgar life at home, to the solitude of his room, where he imagined he could see a pair of green eyes staring at him from every dark corner, tempting him.

Leonora was not laughing.  Her gold-spotted eyes had opened wide; her nostrils were quivering with emotion.  She seemed deeply moved by the young man’s eloquent sincerity.

“Poor Rafael!  My poor dear boy!...  And what are we going to do?”