‘None at all!’ rejoined Afer, with another and deeper sigh. [pg 22]‘The woman was six-and-twenty years old if she was a day; and, as for her appearance, she was as likely to have grown from your Aurelia, as a barn-door fowl from an eaglet. These tales and rumours are detailed by knavish people simply to work upon your weakness, uncle, and to squeeze your purse—why listen to them?’
‘Ah, nephew—how can I shut my ears?’
‘You are an unfailing, bottomless gold-mine to these people.’
‘Oh!’ cried the old man fervidly, throwing up his open palm to the blue heavens, and looking up with a burning glance of his sunken, sorrow-laden eyes, ‘if the good gods would only give me back my lost darling, the joy of my old age,—my gold, and all that I have, to the last farthing, might be flung, if need be, broadcast over the streets of Rome.’
The black brows of the nephew knitted at the vehement words.
‘And, truly, if what you have spent already, uncle, on this vain quest were sown broadcast, there would scarce be a gutter vagabond in the city that would not be the richer. You have done all you can do, and I have helped to the best of my ability.’
‘You have, nephew, right nobly. Think not that I have forgotten it.’
‘Then why cast good after bad? Will you not be assured after all these silent years of the hopelessness of all efforts?’
‘If I lived to a hundred years, nephew, I could never sever hope from me—it is part of me.’
‘And I have none left, though I grieve to say it, and, moreover, my reason is less governed by feeling than yours—poor Aurelia!’