As she was driven through the rugged country on that May afternoon, she felt that she had a future before her, that she was going into action, and leaving stagnation behind, and that her own life, which was to be her very own, was just beginning. It was to be a life quite different from the existence of any one she knew, for, unlike the lives of her friends, hers was to have an integral, independent existence of its own, with one determined object for all its activity.
The months she had passed in Bianca's house had rather strengthened than weakened the unformulated resolution which she had first vaguely reached in the dark days after Bosio's death. There had been much solitude, and many rides and drives into the country with her beautiful, silent friend; and there had been very little contact with the world to disturb the onward current of her thoughts. More than all, the first breath of liberty after long restraint had enlarged and widened her determination to be always free, in spite of the world, and society, and the drone of the busy-bodies' gossip. In her heart, the memory of Bosio had grown in dignity, till it was solemn and imposing out of all proportion with what the man himself had been, even as Veronica had known him. To know the truth of what his real life had been would have shaken her own to its foundations. But there was no fear of that; and now, her chief companion was to be the priest who had loved him as a friend. Possibly that last fact had even influenced her a little in her final determination to live at Muro, rather than in any other of four or five equally habitable or uninhabitable places which she owned, and where she might have begun her work under circumstances quite as favourable to success.
She had thought very little of any need she might feel for relaxation and amusement, and she was very far from realizing what that solitude meant, which she was seeking with so much enthusiasm. She had never yet been as much alone as she should have liked to be, and she could not imagine that she might possibly become tired of playing the princess in the tower for months together, with only the company of one learned old ecclesiastic as her sole diversion. The vision of home which she evoked was always the same, but she did not even know whether the castle had a room which looked down upon the little town. She imagined but a single room; the rest was all a blank. She had been told that it was a great old fortress, with towers and halls and courts, gloomy, grand, and haunted by the ghosts of murdered kings and queens; but the slight descriptions she had heard produced no prevision of the reality as compared with what she really wanted and was sure that she should find.
She thought of Gianluca, as the carriage rolled along through the lower hills, and she looked forward with pleasure to writing about what she saw and expected to see. It seemed probable that she would write even longer letters to him, now that she was to be quite alone, and she hoped that his would be as interesting as ever. She thought again with anger of Taquisara's extraordinary conduct, for she was positively sure that she was not playing with his friend in any sense of the word. The very suggestion would have been insulting, if he had made it in the most carefully guarded and tactful language. As he had put it, it had been nothing short of outrageous.
Gianluca must be blind indeed, she assured herself, if he fancied that she meant more than friendship by the constant exchange of letters with him. It might be eccentric; it might be looked upon as utterly and unpardonably unconventional, but it could never be regarded as a flirtation by letter. The proof of that, Veronica argued to herself, was that both of them knew that it was nothing of the sort, a manner of begging the question familiar to those who wish to do as they please without hindrance from within or without.
CHAPTER XIX.
The roads were good, for it was the month of May. In winter, even Veronica's strong horses could hardly have dragged the light carriage to its destination in one day. It was but little after ten o'clock in the morning when Veronica got out upon the platform of the railway station at Eboli; it was sunset, and the full moon was rising, when her carriage stopped at the entrance of the mountain town.
It had been a very long day, and she had seen much that was quite new to her, and different from what she had expected. At first, indeed, she was amazed at the richness of the country beyond Eboli, as she was driven for nearly an hour through what was literally a forest of ancient olive trees, interrupted only here and there by a broad field of vines, cut low and trained upon short stakes; and from the rising ground beyond Carpella, where the road winds up the first hill, she looked back and saw the shimmering grey-green light of the olive leaves, lying like a delicate mantle over the flat country and in the great hollow, from Eboli to the deep gorge wherein the ancient city of Campania lies as in a nest. A part of the olive land was hers; and as she drove along, the midday breeze blew some of the tiny, star-like olive blossoms into her lap. She took one in her fingers and looked at it closely and could just smell its very faint, aromatic odour.
"It is the first greeting from what is yours," said Don Teodoro, with a smile.
"The wind brings me my own flowers," answered Veronica, and she laughed softly and happily.