'Irresistible.'
'You are wrong, Sangiorgio,' Don Silvio went on, very gently. 'Why should you wish to kill me? I am old, quite old; what you do not do, death will soon do in its natural course.'
'Don Silvio!' cried the other, suddenly prostrated.
'It is true; I am seventy-two years old, but I have lived the lives of three men. I am, in reality, more exhausted and much weaker than anyone knows of. Some day I shall collapse in a single moment. You might be my son, Sangiorgio. You would surely not kill your father for the sake of the inheritance.'
'Don Silvio, Don Silvio, do not say such things!'
'Yes, let me speak. We will not fight about this, however strong my right to do so, and however great your desire. Besides, it would be ridiculous. I, so near the grave, assuming the heat and passion of youth; you, so young, confessing you could not wait. We must not make ourselves ridiculous. I understand such affairs, when they are a question of love and youth, as being tragical, not comical. Better dishonour than a farce, Sangiorgio.'
'True, quite true.'
'And then there is Angelica,' added her aged husband, pronouncing the name with infinite tenderness.
A prolonged silence occurred in the little temple where the absent divinity still invisibly reigned.
'Angelica is good; she must not suffer. When she threw herself into my arms to-day, trembling with terror, beseeching me to save her—do not be jealous, Sangiorgio; she is a daughter to me—although I knew her secret, I let her speak, because her tears, her sobs, her despair, were the proof of her virtue: they showed her conscience rebelling against evil.'