"I went to see the Padre at the Monastery to tell him of my engagement and there—the kind monk—the harvest—the new wine—"
The weatherbeaten features of the old nobleman took on a more cheerful expression at these words.
"Per bacco!" he began, smacking his lips and winking slyly, "it must have been the new Lacrima Christi wine I sent him last week, which has made all the mischief. Ho! ho! if that's the case, my dear boy, you will soon taste the wine that will be worth the tasting," he added with a broad grin, smacking his lips again in a manner attributable to the thorough knowledge of an old wine gourmand.
"Yes, my boy, the same Lacrima Christi will be served at your wedding next month."
The atmosphere was sultry, but he shivered; and if a mirror could have been held before his eyes he would have startled back alarmed from the gray stony face so unlike his.
"Next month?" he stammered.
Until now he tried to forget the whole affair; her image was so utterly driven from his fickle heart as if it were buried twenty feet under the ruins of Herculaneum.
"Yes, my dear Luigi, I shall write at once to Torre Annunziata, and then we will celebrate a merry wedding and invite all—Why, what's the matter?" he asked greatly bewildered. "What a wry face you are making?"
"It is the pleasure—the unlooked-for surprise,—" stammered Luigi with difficulty, while his pale face grew a shade paler. The sweet face of Concetta, with the bewitching dimples from which little mocking Cupids seemed to peep out, challenging him like a siren to a kiss; her silvery laughter, her deep blue eyes like a fairy's—all that came up before his interior vision with intoxicating strength, while the thought that in four weeks he would be called upon to plight his troth to his unlovely cousin made him shudder.