Yet this one might have been on a coastwise trip to Genoa and Marseilles.  That was quite possible.  If one could only find out her name.  And yet, if she had put into a near port Marcello would have come back; for Aurora was quite sure that he had got on board her somehow.  It was all a mystery, all but the certainty she felt that he was still alive, and which nothing could shake, even when every one else had given him up.  Aurora begged her mother to speak to Corbario about it.  With his experience and knowledge of things he would know what to do; he could find some way of tracing the vessel, wherever she might be.

The Contessa was convinced that the girl’s theory was utterly untenable, and it was only to please her that she promised to speak of it if she saw Corbario again.  Soon afterward she decided to leave Rome for the summer, and before going away she went once more to the villa.  It was now late in June, and she found Folco in the garden late in the afternoon.

He looked ill and tired, but she thought him a little less thin than when she had seen him last.  He said that he, too, meant to leave Rome within a few days, that he intended to go northward first to see an old friend of his who had recently returned from South America, and that he should afterwards go down to Calabria, to San Domenico, and spend the autumn there.  He had no news of Marcello.  He looked thoughtfully down at his hands as he said this in a tone of profound sorrow.

“Aurora has a fixed idea,” said Maddalena.  “While she was talking with Marcello at the gap in the bank there was a small ship tossing about not far from the shore.”

“Well?” asked Corbario.  “What of it?”

As he looked up from the contemplation of his hands Maddalena was struck by his extreme pallor and the terrible hollowness of his eyes.

“How ill you look!” she exclaimed, almost involuntarily.  “The sooner you go away the better.”

“What did Aurora say about the brigantine?” he asked earnestly, by way of answer.

Maddalena knew too little about the sea to understand that he must have noticed the vessel’s rig to name it correctly, as he did, and without hesitation.

“She is convinced that Marcello got on board of her,” she answered.

Corbario’s face relaxed a little, and he laughed harshly.

“That is utterly absurd!” he answered.  “No swimmer that ever lived could have got to her, nor any boat either!  There was a terrific surf on the bar.”

“Of course not,” assented Maddalena.  “But you saw the ship, too?”

“Yes.  Aurora was looking at her when I reached the gap.  That is why I noticed the vessel,” Corbario added, as if by an afterthought.  “She was a Sicilian brigantine, and was carrying hardly any sail.  If the gale had lasted she would probably have been driven ashore.  Her only chance would have been to drop anchor.”

“You know all about ships and the sea, don’t you?” asked Maddalena, with a very little curiosity, but without any particular intention.