earnest, he would feel as she did and would have said at once that it was late and time to be going home—­he would have invented any excuse to escape the interview which her mother would try to force upon him.  Could it be love that he felt?  And if not, as her heart told her it was not, what was his object in playing such a comedy?  She knew well enough, from Teresina, that many a young Neapolitan nobleman would have given his title for her fortune, but Teresina, perhaps for reasons of her own, never dared to cast such an aspersion upon San Miniato, even in the intimate conversation which sometimes takes place between an Italian lady and her maid—­and, indeed, if the truth be told, between maids and their mistresses in most parts of the world.

But the doubt thrust itself forward now.  Beatrice was quick to doubt at all times.  She was also capricious and changeable about matters which did not affect her deeply, and those that did were few enough.  It was certainly possible that San Miniato, after all, only wanted her money and that her mother was willing to give it in return for a great name and a great position.  She felt that if the case had been stated to her from the first in its true light she might have accepted the situation without illusion, but without disgust.  Everybody, her mother said, was married by arrangement, some for one advantage, some for the sake of another.  After all, San Miniato was better than most of the rest.  There was a certain superiority about him which she would like to see in her husband, a certain simple elegance, a certain outward dignity, which pleased her.  But when her mother had spoken in her languid way of the marriage, Beatrice had resented the denial of her free will, and had answered that she would please herself or not marry at all.  The Marchesa, far too lacking in energy to sustain such a contest, had contented herself with her favourite expression of horror at her daughter’s unfilial conduct.  Now, however, Beatrice felt that if it had all been arranged for her, she would have been satisfied, but that since San Miniato had played something very like a comedy, she would refuse to be duped by it.  She was very bitter against him in the first revulsion of feeling and treated him more hardly in her thoughts than he, perhaps, deserved.

And there he was, up there by the table, telling her mother of his success.  Her blood rose in her cheeks at the thought and she stamped her foot upon the rock out of sheer anger at herself, at him, at everything and everybody.  Then she moved on.

Ruggiero was standing at the edge of the water looking out to sea.  The moonlight silvered his white face and fair beard and accentuated the sharp black line where his sailor’s cap crossed his forehead.  Wild and angry emotions chased each other from his heart to his brain and back again, firing his overwrought nerves and heated blood, as the flame runs along a train of powder.  He heard a light step behind him and turned suddenly.  Beatrice was close upon him.