Ruggiero produced a fragment of a cigar from his cap and a match from the same safe place and began to smoke, looking at the sea.  People not used to the peculiarities of southern thought would perhaps have been surprised at the desperate simplicity of Ruggiero’s statement to himself.  But those who have been long familiar with men of his country and class must all have heard exactly such words uttered more than once in their experience, and will remember that in some cases at least they were not empty threats, which were afterwards very exactly and conscientiously fulfilled by him who uttered them, and who now either wears a green cap at Ponza or Ischia, or is making a fortune in South America, having had the luck to escape as a stowaway on a foreign vessel.

Nor did it strike Ruggiero as at all improbable that Beatrice might some day wish to be rid of the Conte di San Miniato, and might express such a wish, ever so vaguely, within Ruggiero’s hearing.  He had the bad taste to judge her by himself, and of course if she really hated her betrothed she would wish him to die.  It was a sin, doubtless, to wish anybody dead, and it was a greater sin to put out one’s hands and kill the person in question.  But it was human nature, according to Ruggiero’s simple view, and of course Beatrice felt like other human beings in this matter and all the principal affairs of life.  He had made up his mind, and he never repeated the words he had spoken to himself.  He was a simple man, and he puffed at his stump of a black cigar and strolled down to the boat to find out whether the Cripple and the Son of the Fool had spliced that old spare mooring-rope which had done duty last night and had been found chafed this morning.

Meanwhile the human nature on which Ruggiero counted so naturally and confidently was going through a rather strange phase of development in the upper regions where the Marchesa’s terrace was situated.

Beatrice walked slowly back under the trees.  Ruggiero’s quaint talk had amused her and had momentarily diverted the current of her thoughts.  But the moment she left him, her mind reverted to her immediate trouble, and she felt a little stab of pain at the heart which was new to her.  The news that San Miniato had actually sent a telegram was unwelcome in the extreme.  He had, indeed, said in her presence that he had sent several.  But that might have been a careless inaccuracy, or he might have actually written the rest and given them to be despatched before coming upstairs.  To doubt that the one message already sent contained the news of his engagement, seemed gratuitous.  It was only too sure that he had looked upon what had passed at Tragara as a final decision on the part of Beatrice, and that henceforth she was his affianced bride.  Her mother had not even found great difficulty in persuading her of the fact, and after that one bitter struggle she had given up the battle.  It had been bitter indeed while it had lasted, and some