"You can understand now," he said, quietly, "why I wished to know what her child is like. As for you, Silvio—" he paused, and looked at Silvio Rossano earnestly. "Well," he continued, "I have had one intuition to-day which did not mislead me, and I think my second intuition will prove equally true. I believe that you would make any woman a good husband—that your character does not belie your face."
Silvio looked at him with a quick smile.
"I will make her a good husband," he said, simply. The words were few, but they appealed to Don Agostino more than any lover's protestations would have appealed to him.
"And she?" asked Don Agostino, suddenly. "You are sure that she would make you a good wife? If her nature is like her mother's she will be faithful to you in her heart. I am sure of that. But she is her father's daughter as well, and—well, he is dead, so I say no more. And no doubt the knowledge that he had married a woman whose love was given elsewhere accounted for much of his conduct after his marriage. We will not speak of him, Silvio. But you are sure that you have chosen wisely?"
"Oh, very sure!" exclaimed Silvio.
Don Agostino smiled—a somewhat pathetic smile. "I am very sure, also," he said. "It is strange," he added, thoughtfully, "that your story should be an exact repetition of my own. Almost one would think that she"—and he glanced towards the cabinet—"had sent me here to Montefiano to help her child; that everything during these years had been foreordained. I wondered, when they sent me to Montefiano, whether it were not for some purpose that would one day be made clear to me; for at Montefiano her child was born, and at Montefiano she died, neglected, and practically alone."
Don Agostino sat down at his writing-table. He covered his eyes with his hands for a moment or two, and above him the ivory Christ gleamed white in the sunlight which filtered through the closed Venetian blinds.
"It is strange—yes," said Silvio, in a low voice; "and I, too," he added—"I have felt some power urging me to tell you my story, and my true reason for being here. But," he continued, "our case—Bianca's and mine—is different from yours in one particular, Don Agostino."
Don Agostino looked up. "Yes," he replied; "Donna Bianca Acorari's mother, though she had money, was not the heiress to estates and titles."
"I did not mean that," returned Silvio. "I forgot it," he added. "I am always forgetting it. Perhaps you do not believe me, but when I do remember it I wish that Bianca Acorari were penniless and not noble. There would be nothing then to keep us apart. No; I mean that, in her case, there can be no forcing of another marriage upon her, because I am very sure that Bianca would never submit."