Since receiving the confession of the carter he did not dare to seek an interview with Generosa. He did not dare to look on her agonized eyes and feel that he knew what could set her free and yet must never tell it. He trembled lest in sight of the suffering of this woman, who possessed such power to move and weaken him, he should be untrue to his holy office, should let the secret he had to keep escape him. Like all timid and vacillating tempers, he sought refuge in procrastination.
All unconscious of the growth of public feeling against him, and wrapped in that absorption which comes from one dominant idea, he pursued the routine of his parochial life, and went through all the ceremonials of his office, hardly more conscious of what he did than the candles which his sacristan lighted. The confession made to him haunted him night and day. He saw it, as it were, written in letters of blood on the blank white walls of his bedchamber, of his sacristy, of his church itself. The murderer was there, at large, unknown to all,—at work like any other man in the clear, sweet sunshine, talking and laughing, eating and drinking, waking and sleeping, yet as unsuspected as a child unborn. And all the while Generosa was in prison. There was only one chance left; if she should be acquitted by her judges. But even then the slur and stain of an imputed, though unproved, crime would always rest upon her and make her future dark, her name a by-word in her birthplace. Yes, after what her lover had said, no mere acquittal, leaving doubt and suspicion behind it, would give her back to the light and joy of life. Every man's hand would be against her; every child would point at her as the woman who had been accused of the assassination of her husband.
One day he sought Falko Melegari when the latter was making up the accounts of his stewardship at an old bureau in a deep window-embrasure of the villa.
"You know that the date of the trial is fixed for the 10th of next month?" he said, in a low, stifled voice.
The young man, leaning back in his wooden chair, gave a sign of assent.
"And you," said Gesualdo, with a curious expression in his eyes,—"if they absolve her, will you have the courage to prove your own belief in her innocence? Will you marry her when she is set free?"
The question was abrupt and unlooked for. Falko changed color: he hesitated.
"You will not!" said Gesualdo.
"I have not said so," answered the young man, evasively. "I do not know that she would exact it."
Exact it! Gesualdo did not know much of human nature, but he knew what the use of that cold word implied.