The sight would have disturbed them, had they seen it, though they both were fearless by nature and not easily startled. Had Beatrice seen Ruggiero at that moment, she would have learned once and for ever the difference between real passion and its counterfeit. But Ruggiero knew where he was and had no intention of betraying himself by voice or movement. He suffered almost all that a man can suffer by the heart alone, but he was strong and could bear torture.
The hardest of all was that he understood the real truth, partly by instinct and partly through what he knew of his master. Those rough southern sailors sometimes have a wonderful keenness in discovering the meaning of their masters' doings. Ruggiero held the key to the situation. He knew that San Miniato was poor and that the Marchesa was very rich. He knew very well that San Miniato was not at all in love, for he knew what love really meant, and he could see how the Count always acted by calculation and never from impulse. Best of all he saw that Beatrice was a mere child who was being deceived by the coolly assumed passion of a veteran woman-killer. It was bitterly hard to bear. And he had felt a foreboding of it all in the afternoon—and he wished that he had risked all and brought down the brass tiller on San Miniato's head and submitted to be sent to the galleys for life. He could never have forgotten Beatrice; but San Miniato could never have married her, and that satisfaction would have made chains light and hard labour a pastime.
It was too late to think of such things now. Had he yielded to the first murderous impulse, it would have been better. But he had never struck a man from behind and he knew that he could not do it in cold blood. Yet how much better it would have been! He would not be lying now on the rock, holding his breath and clenching his fists, listening to his Excellency the Count of San Miniato's love making. By this time the Count of San Miniato would be cold, and he, Ruggiero, would be handcuffed and locked up in the little barrack of the gendarmes at Sorrento, and Beatrice with her mother would be recovering from their fright as best they could in the rooms at the hotel, and Teresina would be crying, and Bastianello would be sitting at the door of his brother's prison waiting to see what happened and ready to do what he could. Truly all this would have been much better! But the moment had passed and he must lie on his rock in silence, bound hand and foot by the necessity of hiding himself, and giving his heart to be torn to pieces by San Miniato's aristocratic fine gentleman's hands, and burned through and through by Beatrice's gentle words.
"And so you really love me?" said San Miniato, sure at last of his victory.
"Do you doubt it, after what I have done?" asked Beatrice in a very soft voice. "Did I not leave my hand in yours when you took it so roughly and—you know—-"
"When I kissed it—but I want the words, too—only once, from your beautiful lips—-"
"The words—-" Beatrice hesitated. They were too new to her lips, and a soft blush rose in her cheeks, visible even in the moonlight.
Ruggiero's heart stood still—not for the first time that day. Would she speak the three syllables or not?
As for San Miniato, his excitement had cooled, and he threw all the tenderness he could muster into, his last request, with instinctive tact returning to the more quiet tone he had used at the beginning of the conversation.
"I ask you, Beatrice mia, to say—" he paused, to give the proper effect in the right place—"I love you," he said, completing the sentence very musically and looking up most tenderly into her eyes.