He understood that she was going back to the question she had asked him at first, but still he did not answer. She kept her eyes steadily on Saint Ursula while she spoke again.
'If it is not good-bye, what is it that is so hard to say?'
'I have had a long talk with my father.'
Angela moved a little and looked down at his bent head, for he spoke in an almost despairing tone. She thought she understood him at last.
'He will not hear of our marriage, now that I am a beggar,' she said, prompting him.
But Giovanni raised his face at once, and rather proudly.
'You are unjust to him,' he said. 'He is not changed. It is a very different matter. He has had a great misfortune, and has lost almost all he had, without much hope of recovering anything. We were very well off, and I should have had a right to marry you, though you had not a penny, if this had not happened. As it is, my father is left with nothing but his General's pension to support my mother. My brothers will both need help for years to come, for they are much younger than I am, and I must live on my pay if I mean to stay in the service.'
'Is that all?' Angela's voice trembled a little.
'Yes, my pay, and nothing more——'
'I did not mean that,' she hastened to say, interrupting him, and there was a note of returning gladness in her voice. 'I meant to ask if that was all the bad news.'