She guessed, as she read, what it must have cost him to say that much. He earnestly desired a reconciliation. He wished to come back to Rome to live in his own house, with his wife, before all the world. With a pathetic inability to put his feelings into words, he said that he would try to make her happy ‘by all means acceptable to her.’ Yet he did not wish to force this reconciliation upon her, for he was well aware that in leaving her he had conferred on her a measure of independence and had given her good reason to suppose that he would never come back. Unless she willingly agreed to what he now offered, he would never come back to Rome; for it had been one thing to stay with his invalid mother, leaving his wife to live where she pleased, but it would be quite another in the eyes of the world if he returned to his own house and his wife continued to stay in a hired house. Hitherto there had been no scandal which his authority could not now put down, no open break which might not still be repaired with dignity. Then, on a sudden, the writing became less stiff and clear, and the lonely man’s full heart overflowed. He loved her so dearly—he did not repeat ‘in spite of all’—why might he not hope to make her happy at last? In the past he had not known how to show her how tenderly, how devotedly, he had loved her; he had been but a dull companion for her; she had been made to marry him almost against her will. Without again speaking of her fault he was finding excuses for what he had forgiven. And the burden came back again and again, he loved her with all his heart. It was no mere empty show of reconciliation that he offered her, for the sake of his name, for what the world might say or think. He wished, he asked to be allowed, to take her back altogether, wholly, as if there had been no division.
Maria held the sheet tight between her upraised hands, but a painful tremor ran through her to the tips of her fingers, and the paper shook before her eyes.
She had reached the end now. He had poured out his soul as he had never done before then to any living being; but quite at the last line his natural formality returned, he ‘begged the favour of a speedy reply at her convenience,’ and he signed his name in full—‘Diego Silani di Montalto.’
After a long time Maria rose from her seat, and her face was almost grey. She went to her writing-table and opened a small desk with a simple little gold key she wore on her watch chain. The receptacle was already half full of Castiglione’s letters, and she laid her husband’s on top of the heap, shut down the lid, and turned the key again.
Just then Leone burst into the room, lusty and radiant. He stopped short when he saw his mother’s face.
‘You have been to see the bad priest again!’ he cried angrily.
‘No, dear, I shall not go to see him again. I have had a great—a great surprise. Papa is coming back soon.’