Taquisara

by F. Marion Crawford

"What an absurd institution society is," observed Taquisara, with contempt. "The priest says, 'Ego conjungo vos'; and you are licensed to snap your fingers at everything that has bound you until that moment, as though the law of your marriage were your divorce from law."

"That sounds clever," said Veronica; "but I do not believe it is."

He laughed, indifferently; and after a moment or two, she looked at him, and smiled.

"I did not mean to be so rude," she said.

So they talked in small, objectless remarks, and questions, and answers, neither witty nor quite witless; but Veronica did not refer to Gianluca, and Taquisara knew that for the present he had better let matters alone. Presently Bianca spoke across to Veronica, and the conversation became general. In the course of it, Gianluca spoke to Veronica, and she answered him, and then asked him a question. She was surprised to find that, so long as the others were joining in whatever was said, he seemed quite at his ease, though his colour came and went frequently. On the whole, she had a much better impression of him this time than she had retained after the former meeting, when he had seemed so utterly helpless and shy in her presence. But when both men rose to go away she could not help comparing them again.

Even then, it seemed to her that the comparison was less unfavourable to Gianluca than she had expected that it must be. He was tall and well-proportioned, and in spite of the slight difficulty in walking, which she had to-day noticed for the first time, he was graceful and of easy carriage. His extreme languor in moving was, perhaps, what displeased her the most. When he had entered the room, she had been annoyed at his coming; but now she was rather sorry, than otherwise, that he was going away so soon. Possibly, as she had expected nothing, she was the more easily satisfied. Taquisara, too, had disappointed her. He had talked very much like any one else, and not at all as he had talked at that first meeting. Veronica felt that she was indifferent. Bosio's untimely death had terribly changed the face of the world for her, she thought.

A cold listlessness, unfamiliar to her nature, came over her when the two men were gone. Before long Ghisleri appeared, and there was tea and more conversation. He was thought to be an agreeable man, and people said that he talked well. Veronica wondered vaguely what Bianca saw in him that made her like him so much. But it struck her that the question had not presented itself to her before that day, and that, on the whole, she liked her friend's friend very well.

Presently she left them to themselves in the drawing-room and went to her own room to write a long letter to Don Teodoro, who was now in Muro, and actively engaged in carrying out her wishes for improving the condition of the poor there. As she wrote, her interest in life revived, after having been unaccountably suspended for half an hour, and she felt again all her enthusiasm for the chief object she now had in view.

Soon after this, too, she began to examine the state of the big farms through which she often rode with Bianca, asking questions of the people and entering into conversation with the local under-steward when she chanced to meet him. As was to be expected, the news that the young princess now took an active interest in the administration of her estates soon went abroad amongst the peasants. They soon knew her by sight and were only too ready to come and stand at her stirrup and pour out the tale of their woes, since she was condescending enough to listen. Sometimes, if she found a case of anything like oppression, she interfered. Sometimes, and this was what more often happened, she helped some poor man with money—in order that he might be able to pay his rent to herself. Bianca laughed once at a charity of this kind, but Veronica held her own.

"The rule is for everybody," she said. "They must pay their rents, or go. If I choose to help those who have had trouble, that is my affair, and not the business of the under-steward with whom they have to do. Besides, if the rent is remitted this year, they will expect the same thing in the future, whereas they know that a little money is a passing charity on which they cannot count with certainty. The less publicity there is about charity, the more of self-respect remains to those who profit by it."