"But your child, the innocent one—think now only of her!" faltered Giacomo, struggling with his own sobs. "True, only of her," replied the exile, raising his face, "only of her. Put aside thy thoughts for thyself, friend,—counsel me. If I were to send for Violante, and if, transplanted to these keen airs, she drooped and died—Look, look, the priest says that she needs such tender care; or if I myself were summoned from the world, to leave her in it alone, friendless, homeless, breadless perhaps, at the age of woman's sharpest trial against temptation, would she not live to mourn the cruel egotism that closed on her infant innocence the gates of the House of God?"
Jackeymo was appalled by this appeal; and indeed Riccabocca had never before thus reverently spoken of the cloister. In his hours of philosophy, he was wont to sneer at monks and nuns, priesthood and superstition. But now, in that hour of emotion, the Old Religion reclaimed her empire; and the sceptical world-wise man, thinking only of his child, spoke and felt with a child's simple faith.
CHAPTER XX.
"But again I say," murmured Jackeymo, scarce audibly, and after a long silence, "if the padrone would make up his mind—to marry!"
He expected that his master would start up in his customary indignation at such a suggestion,—nay, he might not have been sorry so to have changed the current of feeling; but the poor Italian only winced slightly, and mildly withdrawing himself from his servant's supporting arm, again paced the terrace, but this time quietly and in silence. A quarter of an hour thus passed. "Give me the pipe," said Dr. Riccabocca, passing into the belvidere.
Jackeymo again struck the spark, and, wonderfully relieved at the padrone's return to the habitual adviser, mentally besought his sainted namesake to bestow a double portion of soothing wisdom on the benignant influences of the weed.
CHAPTER XXI.
Dr. Riccabocca had been some little time in the solitude of the belvidere, when Lenny Fairfield, not knowing that his employer was therein, entered to lay down a book which the doctor had lent him, with injunctions to leave it on a certain table when done with. Riccabocca looked up at the sound of the young peasant's step.
"I beg your honour's pardon, I did not know—"
"Never mind: lay the book there. I wish to speak with you. You look well, my child: this air agrees with you as well as that of Hazeldean?"