"And not the English lady's?" he said.
"What do you know about an English lady, my son?"
"My grandmother talked to me of her. Is it true? She said that I might, turn out to be an Englishman, after all. She said that Vincenza told her that I did not belong to her."
"My child," said the monk, calmly but firmly, "put these thoughts away from your mind. They are idle and vain imaginations. Assunta knew nothing; Vincenza did not always speak the truth. In any case, it is impossible to prove the truth of her story. It is a sin to let your mind dwell on the impossible. Your name is Bernardino Vasari, and you are to be brought up in the monastery of San Stefano by wise and pious men. Is that not happiness enough for you?"
"Oh, yes, yes, indeed; I wish for nothing else," said Dino, throwing himself at Padre Cristoforo's feet, and pressing his lips to the monk's black gown, while the tears poured down his smooth, olive cheeks. "Indeed I am not ungrateful, Reverend Father, and I will never wish to be anything but what you want me to be."
"Better so," soliloquised the Father, when he had comforted Dino with kind words, and led him away to join the companions that would henceforth be his; "better that he should not wish to rise above the station in which he has been brought up! We shall never prove Vincenza's story. If we could do that, we should be abundantly recompensed for training this lad in the doctrines of the Church—but it will never be. Unless, indeed, the woman Vincenza could be found and urged to confession. But that," said the monk, with a regretful sigh, "that is not likely to occur. And, therefore, the boy will be Dino Vasari, as far as I can see, to his life's end. And Vincenza's child is living in the midst of a rich English family under the name of Brian Luttrell. I must not forget the name. In days to come who knows whether the positions of these two boys may not be reversed?"
Thus mused Father Cristoforo, and then he smiled and shook his head.
"Vincenza was always a liar," he said to himself. "It is the most unlikely thing in the world that her story should be true."