He looked at her critically for a moment.
‘To-day it was a good priest,’ he said, in a satisfied tone. ‘I don’t hate this priest. You should always go to this one!’
‘Perhaps I shall,’ Maria answered, still smiling.
Early next morning she went out again, and knelt at the altar rail of the little new oratory that stands in a side street not far from where she lived, and a young priest with a martyr’s face came and gave her the Sacrament; and all was still and peaceful and happy; and she came home after her meditation, feeling that everything was right in heaven and earth, and that there could be no more sin in the world, and she would not even think of that bitter moment a week ago when she had bowed her head upon her hands and had cried out bitterly against the miserable weakness of this dying body.
She had her tea and toast in her dressing-room, and Leone sat at the same little table and had his breakfast with her. She did not quite dare to look at him just then, but his presence somehow made her almost mad with happiness. She felt that God had taken away the reproach at last, and that she had a right to her son.
So they laughed and talked, and she made beautiful plans for days in the country together, and for a month at Anzio in the hot weather, or even two, and Leone was to learn to swim and was to go out sailing with her, and they were to be just ‘we two.’ But were there soldiers at Anzio? Not only there were soldiers, but there was a firing ground for big guns, with butts, and sometimes one heard the cannon booming all the morning, and one could see the smoke come out and curl up after each shot. This was almost too much for the small boy, and he too went almost mad with joy and broke out with the brazen voice of healthy small-boyhood, yelling the tune of the royal march and brandishing his spoon over his head as if it were a sabre and he were leading a charge of cavalry.
Then Destiny knocked at the door.
‘Come in,’ said Maria Montalto cheerfully.
Agostino brought a telegram, and she took it eagerly from the salver and tore it open. It could only be from Castiglione—the news that he had got his exchange into his old regiment. There was no one else in the world who would be likely to telegraph to her. Then she read the printed words.
‘My mother died peacefully last night. A letter follows to-day.—Diego.’