“‘Heavens!’ shouted my younger sister, Fiora, laughing with delight, ’think of the noble Marchese Cicada, who simpers, per Bacco, that the day is warm, and, per dieci, that I am lovelier than ever.  Viva Luigi!  Viva O il pittore.’

“‘My daughter,’ said my grave, cautious mother, ’you are very young yet—­you do not understand these things.  Good night, my child!’

“Fiora kissed her on the brow, and darted out of the room as if she were really alive.

“When she had gone, Camillo smiled in his cold, calm way, and turning to me, asked how I liked Luigi.  I answered calmly, for I was of the same blood as my brother.  I did not disguise how much superior I thought him to the youth I knew.  I was very glad he had found such a friend, and hoped the young man would come often to see us, and be very successful in his profession.

“Then I was silent.  I did not say that I had never lived until that evening.  I did not say how my heart was chilled, because, in leaving the room, Luigi’s last glance had not been for me, but for Fiora.

“Camillo did not praise him much.  It was not his way; but I felt how deeply he honored and loved him, and was rejoiced to think that necessity would often bring us together; only my mother seemed serious, and I knew what her gravity meant.

“‘Do not be alarmed, dear mother,’ I said to her, as I was leaving the room.

“‘My daughter,’ she answered, with infinite pride, ’it is not possible.  I do not understand you.  And you, my daughter, you do not understand yourself nor the world.”

“She was mistaken.  Myself I did understand; the world I did not.”

Again the Marchesa was silent and tears stood in her eyes.  She was seventy years old.  Yes, but in love’s calendar there is no December.

“The days passed, and we saw Luigi constantly.  He was very busy, but found plenty of time to be with us.  His paintings were full of the same kind of power I felt in his character.  He never wearied of the gorgeous atmospheric effects of which Titian and Paul, Giorgione and Tintoretto were the old worshippers.  They touched him sometimes with a voluptuous melancholy in which he found a deeper inspiration.

“Every day I loved him more and more, and nobody suspected it.  He did not, because he was only glad to be in my society when he wanted criticism.  He liked me as an intelligent woman.  He loved Fiora as a bewitching child.

“My mother watched us all, and soon saw there was nothing to fear.  I sought to be lively—­to frequent society; for I knew if my health failed I should be sent away from Venice and Luigi.  He had given me a drawing—­a scene composed from our first meeting upon the Lagune.  The very soul of evening repose brooded upon the picture.  It had even an indefinable tone of sadness, as if he had incorporated into it the sound of the vesper bell.  It had been simply a melancholy sound to him.  To the rest of us, who loved Camillo, it was something more than that.  In his heart the mere remembrance of the island rang melancholy vespers forever.