'Could we not be married first, and go to Paris afterwards?' enquired Tebaldo.
But Miss Lizzie had no intention of being hurried to the altar without having got the full amount of enjoyment out of buying beautiful clothes, and Tebaldo was obliged to content himself with a promise that the wedding should take place early in the autumn. She wished to be married in Rome by an archbishop, if not by a cardinal. Tebaldo agreed to the whole college of cardinals, if necessary.
When he went away, he walked more slowly. The sun was very low, and the air was growing cooler. He sauntered down towards the Corso, well pleased with his own prospects and thinking out the details of his future with intense satisfaction. Tebaldo was no spendthrift fool to waste his wife's fortune on absurd frivolities, or to gamble it away in mad speculations. He meant to build up the Corleone once more, and make his family far greater than it had ever been. He did not know exactly how rich Miss Slayback was, but his guessing was, if anything, under the truth, and he had seen enough of her to know that she desired to be a personage, and was attracted by the idea of rank. He knew that she and her aunt had taken pains to enquire into the validity of his titles. He smiled when he remembered how cheaply he had held them in the old days at Camaldoli, when he would have sold his birthright for a new rifle, and a title or two for a supply of ammunition; and he admired in himself the transformation from the rough country gentleman, hardly one step above the tenant farmer of the Sicilian hills, to the fashionable young nobleman, engaged to be married to a great heiress, and already on the point of restoring to his family all its ancient magnificence.
He walked the length of the Corso and back before he went home. He had hardly entered his room when there was a light knock at the door. Vittoria entered, looking pale and frightened.
'What was the matter between you and Francesco?' she asked as soon as she had shut the door behind her.
'The matter?' Tebaldo looked at her curiously, wondering whether she knew anything about Aliandra Basili. 'We quarrelled, as usual,' he said briefly.
'It must have been worse than usual,' said Vittoria, in a low voice. 'He is gone.'
'Gone? Where? Gone out to dinner?' Tebaldo affected to laugh carelessly.
'No. I think he is gone to Sicily,' answered the young girl.
Tebaldo uttered an exclamation of surprise, and his expression changed as he looked at his sister.