“Heaven forbid it!” replied the Signora.  “He is very strong,” she continued, in the tone people use who are anxious to convince themselves of something doubtful.  “Yet I wish my husband to know that, after my son, he should have the first right.”

“Shall you inform him of the nature of your will, Signora?” inquired the lawyer.

“I have already informed him of what I mean to do,” replied Signora Corbario.

Again the lawyer’s eyebrow moved a little nervously, but he said nothing.  It was not his place to express any doubt as to the wisdom of the disposition.  He was not an old family adviser, who might have taken such a liberty.  There had been such a man, indeed, but he was dead.  It was the duty of the rich woman’s legal adviser to hinder her from committing any positive legal mistake, but it was not his place to criticise her judgment of the man she had chosen to marry.  The lawyer made a few notes without offering any comment, and on the following day he brought the will for the Signora to sign.  By it, at her death, Marcello, her son, was to inherit her great fortune.  Her husband, Folco Corbario, was constituted Marcello’s sole guardian, and was to enjoy a life-interest in one-third of the inheritance.  If Marcello died, the whole fortune was to go to Corbario, without any condition or reservation whatsoever.

When the will was executed, the Signora told her husband that she had done what she intended.

“My dear,” said Corbario, gently, “I thank you for the true meaning of it.  But as for the will itself, shall we talk of it thirty years hence, when Marcello’s children’s children are at your knee?”

He kissed her hand tenderly.

CHAPTER II

Marcello stood at an open window listening to the musical spring rain and watching the changing lights on the city below him, as the dove-coloured cloud that floated over Rome like thin gauze was drawn up into the sunshine.  Then there were sudden reflections from distant windows and wet domes, that blazed like white fires for a little while, till the raindrops dried and the waves of changing hues that had surged up under the rain, rising, breaking, falling, and spreading, subsided into a restful sea of harmonious colour.

After that, the sweet smell of the wet earth came up to Marcello’s nostrils.  A light breeze stirred the dripping emerald leaves, and the little birds fluttered down and hopped along the garden walks and over the leaves, picking up the small unwary worms that had been enjoying a bath while their enemies tried to keep dry under the ilex boughs.