The attitude of ownership was unmistakable. Gordon felt his veins clog with ice. This senile magnifico Teresa’s husband! This—a coerced Venetian mating of name, of rank, of lands alone—for her? The sight smote him painfully, yet with a strange, bitter comfort.
There was even more in the old noble’s look than Gordon guessed: more than anger at her presence here, this young bride of his, apart from the gondolas. He had recognized the man in the monk’s robe. His voice rose in a snarl:
“Unbaptized son of a dog! What is he doing on holy ground?” He pointed his stick at Gordon. “The abandoned of Venice! Has not his past fame penetrated here, Padre, that you lend him asylum? Call my gondoliers and I will have him flung into the lagoon!”
The friar stood transfixed, shocked and pained. Never since he had met Gordon on that very spot at sunrise, had he asked even his name. Suppose the stranger were all the other said. What difference should it make? The fixed habit of the monk answered:
“What he has been is of no question here.”
The grandee sneered at the padre’s answer.
“You left the gondola, to be sure, to pray,” he said to Teresa, then turned to Gordon who waited in constrained quiet: “Wolf in sheep’s clothing! Did you come for the same purpose?”
Teresa felt in Gordon’s silence a control that stilled her own violence of feeling. Her husband saw her glance and a maniacal suspicion darted like lava through his brain. If this meeting were planned, they had met before—she and this maligno whom he had seen on the Piazza San Marco. Two hectic spots sprang into his sallow cheeks. A woman’s veiled form had stood by this man then! He remembered the derisive story with which the caffès had rung the next day. That same night the unlighted gondola had crept through the water-gate into the garden of the Palazzo Albrizzi!
He leaped forward and gripped Teresa’s wrist with shaking fingers, as the padre opened his mouth to speak. He leaned and whispered words into her ear—words that, beside himself as he was, he did not choose that the friar should hear.
The hazard told. Her color faded. A startled look sped to her eyes. He knew that she had met Gordon at night on the square! She read monstrous conclusions in the gaze that held her. Innocent as that errand had been, he would never believe it! A terror struck her cold. This old man who possessed her, that instant ceased to be an object of tolerance and became an active horror, baleful, secretive and cruel. She stood still, trembling.