Dorothy loosed Margaret's hand and stepped swiftly to Sidney's side, putting her hand fondly through his arm. He looked down on her with an expression of irretrievable sadness.
"Listen to me, my son," he said, speaking very slowly and distinctly. "I did a great wrong when I left your mother, and I did a greater wrong in not seeking to know if you lived or not. I never knew you were born. If I had known it, you would have lived with me; and now you would be as Philip is, like him in every way. Look round you. When I die this house will be yours, and you will be a rich man. Do you understand?"
"Yes, signore," he answered, with excited gestures, "I shall have much money and much land. But now I have nothing. Give me some of the money now, and let me go back and buy a farm in Ampezzo. They will be my servants now; nobody will pelt me with stones, and shout after me, and turn me out of the church. They will give me a chair there, and the padre will take off his hat to me. Perhaps they will say masses for the soul of my mother, when I am a rich man. Send me back, oh, my father!"
"Will you go away and leave your brother Philip?" asked Dorothy in hesitating accents. For though she had been diligently learning Italian for some months, she was afraid Martin would not understand her. He looked at her in amazement, and a gleam lighted up his furrowed face.
"The signora knows what I say!" he exclaimed; "these other people here know nothing. I want to speak, and they stare at me. I am a fool in their eyes. But I can speak now to the signora, and to my father, and to Philippe. It is better now."
"Martin," said Sidney, "you must stay here, in England, till you are more like an Englishman. In a year or two I will take you back to Cortina, and you shall choose where you will live. But this house and these lands are yours, and they will be your son's when you die. It is best for you to live in your own house and your own country."
"Stay with us," pleaded Dorothy, looking compassionately into his sad eyes. "Nobody loves you there, and we love you. I will teach you to be like your brother Philip. I used to live here, and I will show you places you have never seen. Stay with us, Martin."
"But my mother calls me," he answered. "They will say no masses for her soul if they do not know I am a rich man."
"I will send them money for it," replied Dorothy. "Besides, it is a mistake, Martin; your mother is not in the Inferno."
He listened to her as if she had been the Madonna he had fancied her when he first saw her. A heavy sob broke through his lips, and then a cry of exultation. The chief burden that had weighed upon his spirit slipped away and fell from him. The deepest stigma of his life was removed; and in this he was like other men, that his mother, whom he had never seen, was dwelling in the same place as the mothers of other men.