II.
At Torre del Greco, in his dining-hall with its lofty windows, the Baron di Pavichino sat at breakfast. His bushy eyebrows contracted darkly when the long-expected visit of his nephew Luigi was announced to him.
Luigi di Pavichino, the passionate lover of the fair Concetta, now entered the room, pale and weary-eyed. For four days he had not been seen in the Palazzo di Pavichino, although not long before he had become engaged to his rich cousin. The fear of exposing himself to her displeasure now brought him here, after changing his clothes for a little more formal attire than that in which he had appeared at the peasants' festival, to explain his absence by a plausible story.
"Per Bacco! Lucetta was looking for you in vain yesterday and the day before!" began the old Baron sternly, plucking at his gray beard in a way that betokened displeasure. "If you are beginning already to provide such disappointments for your future wife, my dear Luigi, then it would possibly be more sensible to call the engagement off while there is yet time."
Luigi trembled at these words of his wealthy uncle. In fact, this marriage was his only plank of salvation, to which he clung with desperate grasp like a man fighting for life in the waves—to which he must cling in order to bring any order into his ruined financial position, which he carefully concealed from his suspecting uncle, and which had to be retrieved as soon as possible.
The fact that the estate inherited from his father, including farms and factories, was mortgaged up to the last cent, would have been sufficient to jeopardize his relations to his unattractive but richly-dowered cousin. He knew the verdict. A long-drawn sigh was the only answer he gave to himself, and besides, there was his incapability of meeting his notes indorsed by friends, falling due within a short time for considerable amounts contracted at the gaming table. Sums which had to be paid because they were debts of honor, for which he pledged his "parole d'honneur."
"Forgive me, dear uncle," he began stumblingly, with these reflections in mind.