Franco took her in his arms, kissing and caressing her, while she kept repeating: "My Papa! My Papa!" in a pitiful, grieved voice that made their hearts ache. Her father yearned over her, and protested that he would always stay with her; but he wept at his own deceit, wept with the emotion this new tenderness, springing up at such a moment, caused him.
Luisa was thinking of her husband's cry. Gilardoni saw she suspected a secret, and, hoping to distract her thoughts, asked her if Franco intended to start at once. Franco himself replied. Everything depended upon a letter from Turin. Perhaps it would be a week, at the latest a fortnight, before he started. Luisa was silent, and the subject was dropped. Then Franco talked of politics, of the probability that war would break out in the Spring. But again conversation soon languished. Gilardoni and Luisa seemed to be thinking of something else, to be listening to the beat of the waves against the garden wall. Finally Ismaele returned, drank his punch, and assured them that the lake was not very rough, and that they could start homewards.
As soon as the Maironis were seated in the boat, and Maria had gone to sleep, Luisa asked her husband if there was something she did not know, and which Gilardoni must not tell.
Franco did not answer.
"Enough!" said she. Then her husband threw his arm around her neck and pressed her to him, protesting against words she had not uttered. "Oh, Luisa, Luisa!"
Luisa suffered his embrace, but did not return it, and at last, in despair, her husband promised to tell her every thing, at once. "Do you think I am curious?" she whispered, in his arms. No, no. He would tell her at once, tell her everything; he would explain why he had not spoken before. She did not wish this; she preferred that he should speak at some other time, and of his own free will.
The wind was in their favour and the light shining in the window of the loggia served Ismaele well as a guide. Franco's arm still encircled his wife's shoulders, and his gaze was fixed upon that shining point. Neither he nor she thought of the loving and prudent hand that had lighted it. But Ismaele thought of it, and reflected that neither Veronica nor Cia were capable of such an act of genius, and blessed the engineer's kind heart.
On leaving the boat Maria woke up, and her parents seemed to have no thought save for her. When they were in bed Franco put out the light.
"It concerns my grandmother," said he in a broken and agitated voice. "Poor boy!" Luisa murmured and took his hand affectionately. "I have never told you in order to avoid accusing my grandmother, and also because——" He paused, and then it was he who mingled with his words the most tender caresses, to which Luisa now no longer responded. "I feared your impressions, your sentiments, the ideas you might conceive——!" As his words began to express his doubts his voice grew more tender.
Luisa felt the approach, not of a dispute, but of a far more lasting disagreement. Now, she no longer wished her husband to speak, and he, noticing her increasing coldness, did not continue. She rested her forehead against his shoulder, and said, almost in spite of herself: "Tell me!"