"No, Bastianello. That is what I cannot tell any one, not even you."
"Then I will not ask. But I think I know, now."
Going over the events of the past weeks in his mind, it had suddenly flashed upon Bastianello that his brother loved Beatrice. Then everything explained itself in an instant. Ruggiero was such a gentleman—in Bastianello's eyes, of course—it was like him to break his heart for a real lady.
"Perhaps you do know," answered Ruggiero gravely, "but if you do, then do not tell me. It is a business better not spoken of. But what one thinks, one thinks. And that is enough."
A crowd of brown-skinned boys were in the water swimming and playing, as they do all day long in summer, and dashing spray at each other. They had a shabby-looking old skiff with which they amused themselves, upsetting and righting it again in the shallow water by the beach beyond the bathing houses.
"What a boat!" laughed Bastianello. "A baby can upset her and it takes a dozen boys to right her again!"
"Whose is she?" enquired Ruggiero idly, as he filled his pipe.
"She? She belonged to Black Rag's brother, the one who was drowned last Christmas Eve, when the Leone was cut in two by the steamer in the Mouth of Procida. I suppose she belongs to Black Rag himself now. She is a crazy old craft, but if he were clever he could patch her up and paint her and take foreigners to the Cape in her on fine days."
"That is true. Tell him so. There he is. Ohè! Black Rag!"
Black Rag came down the pier to the two brothers, a middle-aged, bow-legged, leathery fellow with a ragged grey beard and a weather-beaten face.