Poor Don Rocco, as usual, had also lost at terziglio; and this gave a somewhat gray cast to his ideas, notwithstanding his proverbial carelessness of every mundane interest.  That hole in his pocket, that continuous dropping, made him reflect.  Would it not have been better for him to give the same amount in alms?

“There is this good thing about it,” he thought, “that it is a terrible bore, and that they all badger me.  I certainly do not play for pleasure.”

He passed on the left of the road a dark clump of trees, ascending slowly in the darkness towards three large cypresses of unequal height, standing out black against the sky.  There, between the old cypresses, stood the little country church of St. Luke, attached to a small convent which had had no inmates for a hundred years.  The little hillock garlanded with vines had no other structures.  From the convent, and from the grassy knoll, on which stood the little cypress-overhung church, the main road could not be seen, but only other knolls gay with vineyards, villas, and country houses, islands on an immense plain, extending from the hills further away as far as the Alps and blending eastward in the mists of the invisible sea.  The simple chaplain of Countess Carlotta lived alone in the convent, like a priest of silence, content with his meagre prebend, content to preach with might and main in the little church, to be called during the day to bless the beans, and at night to assist the dying, to cultivate the vine with his own hands; content with everything, in fine; even with his servant, an ugly old maid of about forty, at whose discretion he ate, drank, and dressed himself most resignedly, without exchanging more than a dozen words with her throughout the year.

“If I send her away,” he said to himself, as he passed between the high hedges of the lane that led up from the main road to St. Luke, “it will damage and dishonor her.  I cannot conscientiously do it, because I am sure that it isn’t true.  And with that Moro, of all men!”

The clock in the bell-tower struck eleven.  Don Rocco began to think of his sermon, of which only three-quarters was written, and he rushed down from the church square to the door which led into his courtyard under the bell-tower at the end of a steep and stony lane.  As he opened the gate and passed across the yard he was brought suddenly to a standstill.  A faint light was shining from the windows of his sitting-room, the former refectory of the monks, on the lower floor.

Don Rocco had left at four o’clock to pay his visit to the Countess Carlotta, and had not returned in the meanwhile.  He could not have left the lamps lighted.  Therefore Lucia must have returned before the time she had set; that must certainly be the reason.  He did not fatigue his brain by making any other suppositions, but entered.

“Is it you, Lucia?” he called.  No answer.  He passed through the vestibule, approached the kitchen, and stood motionless on the doorsill.