“No, no—­turn in and go to sleep.  And no spying, as you’re a gentleman.  I’ll talk reason to the poor fellow.  I reckon it’s going to be all right.  We know that he’s had shell shock and all the rest of it, so I dare say the law won’t be very hard upon him.”

“The dead man’s wife was an angel to Robert Redmayne.  He thought at first that she had come to give him up.  But her eyes showed him that she had come in mercy.  May I speak of your niece a moment before I go?”

Bendigo shrugged his round shoulders and pushed his hand through his red hair.

“It’s no good speaking of her till you’ve spoken to her,” he said.  “I know what you are after very well.  But it’s up to her, I reckon, not me.  She’s gone her own way since she was a nipper—­got her father’s will hid under her woman’s shape.”

He reflected uncomfortably that Mark Brendon must hear every word about to pass; but there was no help for that.

“Our Italian way is to approach the parents of the loved one,” explained Doria.  “To win you is to be far on my way, for you stand to her in the place of parent.  Is it not so?  She cannot live alone.  She was not meant by God to be a single woman, or a widow woman.  There is a saying in my tongue, ’She who is born beautiful is born married.’  I terribly fear that somebody else will come.”

“But what about your ambitions—­to wed an heiress and claim the title and the territory of your vanished forbears?”

Doria swept his hands to right and left with a great gesture, as though casting away his former hopes.

“It is fate,” he said.  “I planned my life without love.  I had never loved and never wanted to.  I guessed that love would appear after I had married money and earned the necessary means and leisure to love.  But now all is changed.  The arrow has sped.  There has come the spirit simpatica instead of the necessary rich woman.  Now I do not want the rich woman but only she who wakens my passion, adoration, worship.  Life has nothing in it but Madonna—­English Jenny.  What are castles and titles—­pomp and glory—­when weighed against her?  Dust, padron mio, all dust!”

“And what about her, Giuseppe?”

“Her heart is hidden; but there is that in her eyes that tells me to hope.”

“And what about me?”

“Alas!  Love is selfish.  But you are the last I would seek to hurt or to rob.  You have been very good to me and Madonna loves you.  It is certain that if the very best happened, she would do nothing to offend one who has been to her as you have been.”

“We can stow the subject for six months anyhow,” replied Bendigo, lighting his long clay.  “I suppose, in your country as well as mine, there’s a right and a wrong way to approach a woman; and seeing my girl’s a widow—­made so under peculiarly sad circumstances—­you’ll understand that love talk is out of the question for a good bit yet a while.”

“Most truly you speak.  I hide even the fire in my eyes.  I only dare look at her between the lids.”