It was an unhealthy summer. Each year the doctor had kept up the attentive habit of spending a month with his mother, the good old peasant woman in the country, doing the simplest kinds of work—resting, not reading, neither calling nor seeing visitors, keeping always with his mother, speaking the peasant's dialect again, building up his physical and moral health by rustic habits. Well, that year, tied by love's chain, he put off his start from day to day to Molise, feeling all the loss of putting it off, growing pale every time a letter came from his mother, dictated by her to the estate agent—letters that were full of melancholy summonses to come to her. The doctor stayed on in Naples, displeased with himself and others, worshipping Bianca Maria, hating the Marquis. The poor thing's dreams were always disturbed by her father's delusions; she fell off daily in health, and the doctor could do nothing to cure her. All he could manage was that, by offering his carriage, Bianca Maria should take long drives by the sea on the gentle slopes that lovingly enclose Naples. Old Margherita went with her, and sometimes the doctor also dared to go out with the young girl. When he heard of such a thing, the Marquis di Formosa frowned, the old family blood boiled; he felt inclined to punish the bold plebeian, who behaved as if he was affianced to the high-born maiden. But he held his tongue; he had had so many money transactions with Amati, and went on having them every day, keeping up still more pride, decorum, and honour with it. Besides, everyone said, with a compassionate smile, that Dr. Amati would soon marry the Marchesina Cavalcanti, as if the doctor would be doing a kindly act to marry her.
Up there, in green Capodimonte woods, with its hundred-year-old trees, its fields carpeted with flowers, down there along the charming Posillipo Road, that goes down to the vapoury Flegrei fields, the lovers' idyll began again before Nature, ever lovely in Naples, with its gentle lines and colouring. The maiden's delicate, bloodless cheeks, with the sun and the open air going round her head, got coloured by a thin pink flush, as if her impoverished blood was moving quicker. She smiled sometimes, and threw back her head to drink in the pure air; she managed to laugh, showing white teeth and pinky gums that anæmia had made colourless. Then the doctor, become a boy again, chattered and laughed with her, looking into her eyes, taking her by the hand, sometimes loading her with field flowers. They forgot old Margherita, who forgot them, as she sat on the grass stupefied by the free summer air, as old people are apt to be; but they were so loving and modest with it, that the forgetfulness was no sin. The maiden went back to the house intoxicated with light, sun, and love, her hands full of flowers, her pink nostrils dilated fully to breathe in the pure air still; but as the carriage got into the city streets her youthful smile died away, and when they went under the Rossi Palace entrance she bent her diminished head.
'What is the matter with you?' the doctor asked her anxiously.
'It is nothing,' she replied, the great answer of timid, distracted women who hide their fears.
She went up to her bare, sad room very slowly, but still had a smile for Antonio Amati on the threshold. She went into the house with a resolute look, as if she were keeping down alarm or distaste. Often Carlo Cavalcanti came to meet her, coldly angry, his face distorted by his bad hours of passion. She shivered, while his very look made the blood fly from her face, and chased away the whole idyll of love, took away all the sweetness from the sun and from love. When she got into the drawing-room, she put her big bundle of flowers down on a corner of the table. The old lord questioned her anxiously and greedily about what road she had gone and what she had seen. Bianca answered feebly in short phrases, turning her head away; but he persisted—he wanted to know all she had seen. Nowadays, everything his daughter saw filled him with uncertainties, curiosity, and sorrow; he tried continually to find out in whatever she saw a mystic source of the cipher of lottery numbers. He now considered she was a medium, a much better one than Don Pasqualino, because she was a woman, an innocent maiden, and unconscious of her powers. She did not know it, but she was a medium. Had she not seen the spirit that fatal night weeping and hailing her? He went on wildly with his close questioning, obliging his daughter to follow him in his freaks.
'What have you seen? what have you seen?' the gambler, who forgot he was a father, asked in anguish.
How love's young dream flew away, with its light and happiness! how all the oppressive ghosts of the bare old house gathered round her from that old man raving alarmingly, and obliging her to go through the same terror. Also, every time she mentioned the name of Antonio Amati, her preserver, friend, and lover, the Marquis di Formosa reddened with rage. She saw that her father had ended by hating Amati thoroughly for the very services he had done him, for the very gratitude he owed him. Formosa's face grew so hard and fierce that Bianca Maria was frightened. Her heart was torn between her unwavering daughterly respect and her love for Antonio Amati. Once Margherita hinted before Formosa at rumours of a marriage between her ladyship and the doctor. The Marquis got into a fury and said 'No!' with such a yell that Margherita put her hands to her ears in a fright.
'Still, her ladyship must marry some day,' she remarked timidly and maternally, 'and the doctor might be better than another.'
'I said no,' the Marquis retorted darkly.