“He must be found,” he said.  “I have good nerves, but if I do not find out what has become of him I shall go mad.”

The lawyers spoke of courage and patience, but a sickly smile twisted Folco’s lips.

“Put yourself in my place, if you can,” he answered.

The lawyers, who knew the value of the property to a farthing, wished they could, though if they had known also what was passing in his mind they might have hesitated to exchange their lot for his.

“He was like your own son,” they said sympathetically.  “A wife and a son gone on the same day!  It is a tragedy.  It is more than a man can bear.”

“It is indeed!” answered Corbario in a low voice and looking away.

Almost the same phrases were exchanged each time that the two men came to the villa about the business, and when they left they never failed to look at each other gravely and to remark that Folco was a person of the deepest feeling, to whom such an awful trial was almost worse than death; and the elder lawyer, who was of a religious turn of mind, said that if such a calamity befell him he would retire from the world, but the younger answered that, for his part, he would travel and see the world and try to divert his thoughts.  In their different ways they were hard-headed, experienced men; yet neither of them suspected for a moment that there was anything wrong.  Both were honestly convinced that Folco had been a model husband to his dead wife, and a model father to her lost son.  What they could not understand was that he should not find consolation in possessing their millions, and they could only account for the fact by calling him a person of the deepest feeling—­a feeling, indeed, quite past their comprehension.

Even the Contessa dell’ Armi was impressed by the unmistakable signs of suffering in his face.  She went twice to see him within three weeks after her friend’s death, and she came away convinced that she had misjudged him.  Aurora did not go with her, and Corbario barely asked after her.  He led Maddalena to his dead wife’s room and begged her to take some object that had belonged to the Signora, in memory of their long friendship.  He pressed her to accept a necklace, or a bracelet, or some other valuable ornament, but Maddalena would only take a simple little gold chain which she herself had given long ago.

Her own sorrow for her friend was profound but undemonstrative, as her nature had grown to be.  Aurora saw it, and never referred to it, speaking only now and then of Marcello, to ask if there were any news of him.

“He is not dead,” the girl said one day.  “I know he will come back.  He went away because I called him a baby.”

Her mother smiled sadly and shook her head.

“Did you love him, dear?” she asked softly.

“We were children then,” Aurora answered.  “How do I know?  I shall know when he comes back.”