“You know the reason; don’t oblige me to tell it,” she added, with dignity and supplication.
Immediately all the man’s anger evaporated. Again human charity and fraternal pity moved him.
“You are ill, Vittoria,” he said. “You must get well.”
She made a vague gesture of denial and of impossibility, and said nothing more. Nor did he attempt to break the heavy silence.
X
Emilio Guasco is forty. He is tall, thin, dried up, and appears robust. His face is brown, with shining black moustaches. His hair is black, though white at the temples, which brightens and sweetens the swarthiness of his complexion. His eyes are exceedingly black, of an opaque blackness when their glance is tired or in repose, but sometimes a secret force animates them, giving an ardent and gloomy character to his face. The forehead is ample and well-defined, the nose aquiline, the chin long, showing an obstinate will. The profile is somewhat hard and sharp, scarcely tempered by a mouth still fresh and youthful, in which an acute eye can sometimes notice indulgence and good nature.
But in general Emilio’s face is austere, sometimes gloomy, while its lines, if not exactly correct, are at least harmonious. In spite of all this Emilio’s appearance is striking and attractive, with the attraction of all men whose appearance speaks of spirit and energy. A portion of the men he associated with, a small portion certainly, came to him with that species of secure instinct, which human sympathy has for souls which contain a really personal secret of life. Another portion, a larger one, regarded him with a certain respect mixed with repulsion, considering him a dramatic character in a laughable comedy. A last portion, and this the greatest and most frivolous, avoided him as a great bore, who prevented others from amusing themselves and taking life as a farce.
Emilio Guasco belongs to the old Roman bourgeois, and to the old bank which for over a hundred years has been allied with the Roman aristocracy and later to the great Italian society, which has taken up its abode in Rome around the rule of the Quirinal. His ancestors, as well as his father and uncles, have always belonged to the smart set, mixing with it intimately, while in business they had dealings with other important sets of the capital. Frequently they have been the saviours of noble fortunes in danger, and of secret aid to Italian politics, so often in the early days in need of pecuniary assistance.
Emilio is the only son. His father is dead, and he is in partnership with his uncles and cousins in the bank of Guasco and Co. But in spite of the fact that from childhood, boyhood, and youth he has always been in the midst of affairs, and that, during the last ten years, after a violent economic crisis, affairs in Rome are waking up again, he is a very mediocre man of business and banker. He never likes this intellectual work, which is sometimes not without its excitement and poetry, so he works at the Guasco Bank moderately, methodically, aridly, without a gleam of geniality or passion. Thus he continues his father’s work, which had been fervid, efficacious and fortunate; he continues it as a heavy duty, which he limits to the narrowest and most external mechanical participation.
Sometimes he believes that he would gladly leave the bank, leaving the bulk of his capital there but renouncing its management: sometimes he himself has vaguely hinted that he wished to hear nothing more of it. However, his cousin, Robert Guasco, forced him to stay so as not to give the appearance of weakening the bank. Robert, luckily, is a very intelligent banker, capable and laborious, and his mind, strength, and enormous activity compensate for Emilio’s cold inertia.