“Would you have married me before I left Mulberry?”
“Yes; Dio my witness.”
“Why did you not come to me and say so?”
“But I could not find you. My nephew, Bertino, will tell you that I speak truth. I told him that I intended to make you my wife.”
“When did you tell him that?” she asked quickly, leaning forward and awaiting the answer eagerly, while Signor Di Bello strove to recollect.
“Ah, yes, now I have it,” he said at length. “I remember because it was the day after my sister Carolina sailed for Genova—two days after the Feast of San Giorgio, my saint.”
The recollection rose clear to Juno that it was on the day following Carolina’s departure that she and Bertino went to the little rectory in Second Avenue. And equally vivid to her consciousness stood forth the inflaming truth that Bertino, with full knowledge of Signor Di Bello’s purpose to take her for wife, had hastened their union in order to checkmate his rival. So this moneyless clerk had tricked her into marriage, and cheated her of a rich husband!
“Maledetto!” she said in a half-stifled voice. At the same instant there flashed in her brain a resolve to rid herself of Bertino.
“Why maledetto?” asked the signore. “Do you not accept my offer?”
“Another time I will give you my answer,” she said, rising. “I must go.”