“How happy I should have been,” Benedetto continued, “to have worked in your garden,
[FN 1: “Of the heart’s veil she never was divested.”
DANTE’S Paradiso, Canto iii.
(Longfellow’s translation) ] have sometimes seen you, to
have heard you speak!”
A stifled exclamation escaped Noemi when reminded of that evening full of memories she could not express. Giovanni took this opportunity of offering hospitality to Benedetto, Don Clemente having told him he intended leaving Jenne that night. They could leave together, if he wished, after the interview which he was going to grant Giovanni’s sister-in-law. Noemi, very pale, looked fixedly at Benedetto for the first time, awaiting his answer.
“I thank you,” said he. “If I knock at your door, you will throw it open to me. I can say no more at present.”
Giovanni and his wife prepared to leave. Benedetto begged them to remain. Surely the Signorina had no secrets from them; at least not from her sister, if perhaps from her brother-in-law. Even this indirect appeal to Maria was of no avail, for Noemi remarked, with much embarrassment, that these secrets were not her own. The Selvas withdrew.
Benedetto remained standing, and did not invite Noemi to be seated. He was aware that a friend of Jeanne’s stood before him, and he foresaw what was coming—a message from Jeanne.
“Signorina?” said he.
His manner was not discourteous, but signified clearly, “The quicker the better.”
Noemi understood. She would have been offended had another person acted thus; but with Benedetto she was not offended. With him she felt humble.
“I have been requested to ask you,” she began, “whether you know anything about a person with whom you must have been intimately acquainted, whom, I believe, you also loved very dearly? I am not sure I pronounce the name correctly, I am not an Italian. It is Don Giuseppe Flores.”