“Well do not tell me his name, because I should tell Ruggiero, and Ruggiero might do him an injury.  It is better not to tell me.”

Teresina laughed a little.

“I shall certainly not tell you who he is,” she said.  “You can find that out for yourself, if you take the trouble.”

“It is better not.  Either Ruggiero or I might hurt him, and then there would be trouble.”

“You, too?”

“Yes, I too.”  Bastianello spoke the words rather roughly and looked fixedly into Teresina’s eyes.  Since she did not love Ruggiero, why should he not speak?  Yet he felt as though he were not quite loyal to his brother.

Teresina’s cheeks grew red and then a little pale.  She twisted the cord of the Venetian blind round and round her hand, looking down at it all the time.  Bastianello stood motionless before her, staring at her thick black hair.

“Well?” asked Teresina looking up and meeting his eyes and then lowering her own quickly again.

“What, Teresina?” asked Bastianello in a changed voice.

“You say you also might do that man an injury whom I love.  I suppose that is because you are so fond of your brother.  Is it so?”

“Yes—­and also—­”

“Bastianello, do you love me too?” she asked in a very low tone, blushing more deeply than before.

“Yes.  I do.  God knows it.  I would not have said it, though.  Ah, Teresina, you have made a traitor of me!  I have betrayed my brother—­and for what?”

“For me, Bastianello.  But you have not betrayed him.”

“Since you do not love him—­” began the sailor in a tone of doubt.

“Not him, but another.”

“And that other—­”

“It is perhaps you, Bastianello,” said Teresina, growing rather pale again.

“Me!” He could only utter the one word just then.

“Yes, you.”

“My love!” Bastianello’s arm went gently round her, and he whispered the words in her ear.  She let him hold her so without resistance, and looked up into his face with happy eyes.

“Yes, your love—­did you never guess it, dearest?” She was blushing still, and smiling at the same time, and her voice sounded sweet to Bastianello.

Only a sailor and a serving-maid, but both honest and both really loving.  There was not much eloquence about the courtship, as there had been about San Miniato’s, and there was not the fierce passion in Bastianello’s breast that was eating up his brother’s heart.  Yet Beatrice, at least, would have changed places with Teresina if she could, and San Miniato could have held his head higher if there had ever been as much honesty in him as there was in Bastianello’s every thought and action.

For Bastianello was very loyal, though he thought badly enough of his own doings, and when Beatrice called Teresina away a few minutes later, he marched down the corridor with resolute steps, meaning not to lose a moment in telling Ruggiero the whole truth, how he had honestly said the best things he could for him and had asked Teresina to marry him, and how he, Bastianello, had been betrayed into declaring his love, and had found, to his amazement, that he was loved in return.