"Then he has left for Naples?" said Bonpre, to whom Prince Pietro had read this letter—"A sudden departure, is it not?"
"Very sudden!"
"He will not know what has happened to Angela—"
"Oh he will be sure to hear that!" said the Prince—"To-night it will be in all the newspapers both of Rome and Naples. Angela's light cannot be hidden under a bushel!"
"True. Then of course he will return at once."
"Naturally. If he hears the news on his way, he will probably be back to-night—" said Sovrani, but his fuzzy brows were still puckered. Some uncomfortable thought seemed to trouble him,—and presently, as if moved by a sudden inexplicable instinct, he took the basket of lilies away from where he had set it in front of his daughter's picture, and transferred it to a side-table. Cardinal Bonpre, always observant, noticed his action.
"You will not leave the flowers there?" he queried.
"No. The picture is a sacred thing!—it is an almost living Christ!—in whom Varillo does not believe!"
The Cardinal lifted his eyes protestingly.
"Yet you let the child marry him?"