There was probably a tacit understanding between the two men.
Anna seemed to be unconscious of what was going on. Whenever her guardian approached her, presenting himself with that elegant manner which was one of his charms, she welcomed him with a luminous smile, giving him her hand, gazing at him with brilliant, joyful eyes, listening eagerly to what he had to say, and by every action showing him her good-will. And when, in turn, Luigi Caracciolo followed, she gave him a formal handshake, and exchanged a few words with him, distantly, coldly. He would try his hardest to shine before her, to bring the talk round to subjects with which he was familiar; but their interviews were always so short! At the theatre, between the acts; at the Villa, walking together for ten minutes at the utmost; at a ball, during a quadrille; and always in the presence of Laura, or Stella, or the Marchesa Scibilla, the girls' distant cousin, who often chaperoned them; and always watched from afar by their guardian Cesare Dias.
The relations between Luigi Caracciolo and Anna Acquaviva were such as, save in rare exceptional cases, always exist between people of the aristocracy. They were founded upon conventionality tempered by a certain amount of sympathy. The rigorous code of our nobility forbids anything approaching intimacy. Luigi Caracciolo's courtship of Anna was precisely like that of every other young man of his world. During the Carnival, it became a little more pressing, perhaps; he began to take on the appearance of a man in love. It seemed as if he invented pretexts for seeing her every day.
Willingly or unwillingly, Cesare Dias was his accomplice. Luigi was becoming more and more attentive. If Anna mentioned a book, he would send it to her, with a note; he would underline the sentimental passages, and when he met her again would ask her opinion upon it. If she mentioned a friend of her childhood, he would interest himself in all the particulars of the friendship. He was burning to know something about her first love affair; he had heard it vaguely rumoured that she had had one, that it had ended unhappily, and been followed by a violent illness.
And, indeed, from the way in which she would sometimes suddenly turn pale, from certain intonations of her voice, from her habit of going off into day-dreams when something said or done seemed to suggest old memories to her, it was easy for him to see that she must have passed through some immense emotional experience, and suffered from some terrible shock. She had a secret! Behind her great black eyes, behind her trembling lips, behind her silence, she hid a secret.
Luigi was in love with her, in his own way; not very deeply in love, but in love.
If Cesare Dias, in Anna's hearing, spoke of love, of the folly of passion, of the futility of hope, the girl bowed her head, listening without replying, as if she considered Cesare the infallible judge of all things.
Luigi Caracciolo saw this, and it tormented him with curiosity. Once he openly asked Dias if Anna had not already been in love. Dias, with the air of a man of the world, answered:
"Yes, she was interested in a young man, a decent young fellow, who behaved very well."