“And you talked.”
“It was very awkward for me. But I had to talk: he seemed to make me. You see he thought I was here as a tourist; he thinks so still. He intended to be civil, and I judged it better to be civil also.”
“And of what did you talk?”
“The weather—there will be rain, he says, by tomorrow evening—the other towns, England, myself, about you a little, and he actually mentioned Lilia. He was perfectly disgusting; he pretended he loved her; he offered to show me her grave—the grave of the woman he has murdered!”
“My dear Miss Abbott, he is not a murderer. I have just been driving that into Harriet. And when you know the Italians as well as I do, you will realize that in all that he said to you he was perfectly sincere. The Italians are essentially dramatic; they look on death and love as spectacles. I don’t doubt that he persuaded himself, for the moment, that he had behaved admirably, both as husband and widower.”
“You may be right,” said Miss Abbott, impressed for the first time. “When I tried to pave the way, so to speak—to hint that he had not behaved as he ought—well, it was no good at all. He couldn’t or wouldn’t understand.”
There was something very humorous in the idea of Miss Abbott approaching Gino, on the Rocca, in the spirit of a district visitor. Philip, whose temper was returning, laughed.
“Harriet would say he has no sense of sin.”
“Harriet may be right, I am afraid.”
“If so, perhaps he isn’t sinful!”