'You know that the date of the trial is fixed for the tenth 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 Don 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 colour; he hesitated.
'You will not!' said Don Gesualdo.
'I have not said so,' answered the young man, evasively. 'I do not know that she would exact it.'
Exact it! Don Gesualdo did not know much of human nature, but he knew what the use of that cold word implied.
'I thought you loved her! I mistook,' he said, bitterly. A rosy flush came for a moment on the wax-like pallor of his face.
Falko Melegari looked at him insolently.
'A churchman should not meddle with these things! Love her! I love her—yes. It ruins my life to think of her yonder. I would cut off my right arm to save her; but to marry her if she come out absolved—that is another thing; one's name a by-word, one's credulity laughed at, one's neighbours shy of one—that is another thing, I say. It will not be enough for her judges to acquit her; that will not prove her innocence to all the people here, or to my people at home in my own country.'