"And Bianca's happiness," added Silvio, "that should concern you, too."
"It will concern me henceforth," returned Giacinta, "because, though I do not know Donna Bianca, I understand now that her happiness and yours is the same thing."
Silvio looked at her with a quick smile. "You will know Bianca some day," he said, "and then you will see how right I was."
Two mornings afterwards, Silvio received a second letter from Bianca, and from it he learned how it had happened that Don Agostino had so quickly been able to communicate with her. Bianca told him many other things as well; and among them was a piece of information which, while it gave him a considerable amount of satisfaction, at the same time made him uneasy and restless in his mind.
There was, she wrote, a threatening of disturbances among the people at Montefiano in consequence of the Abbé Roux having persuaded her step-mother to dismiss the fattore and to consent to the rents being raised. Bianca did not understand very well what was the matter, but it was evident that the Abbé Roux and her step-mother feared that things might become serious, for they had discussed in her presence the advisability of asking for soldiers to be sent to Montefiano if there was any more trouble with the contadini. Moreover, Concetta Fontana, the fattore's daughter, to whom Bianca had already alluded as being her and Silvio's friend and channel of communication, had told her that the people were angry because they suspected she was being kept as a kind of prisoner at Montefiano until she should consent to marry Baron d'Antin, and that her engagement to Silvio was perfectly well known in the paese. The peasants were going to send a deputation to the castle, and to insist not only on the increase in the rents being abandoned and the agent, Fontana, reinstated in his post, but also, according to Concetta, on seeing her, Bianca, and speaking with her as their padrona.
The intelligence certainly carried with it food for reflection. Silvio's first feeling on reading Bianca's words was one of satisfaction. If it were known or suspected at Montefiano that Donna Bianca Acorari was being kept in seclusion in order to force her to marry a foreigner old enough to be her father; if it were supposed that her property and interests were being tampered with by strangers for their own benefit, at the expense of her own people, a situation might easily develop which would compel Princess Montefiano to allow her step-daughter to marry the man she wished to marry. It was certainly no bad thing if Bianca were rescued from her present position by the force of public opinion; and if her own people gathered round her, Monsieur l'Abbé Roux and Monsieur le Baron d'Antin might very possibly find themselves obliged to retire from the scene. If this occurred, it might reasonably be hoped that the princess would listen to other counsels than those by which she had hitherto been influenced.
So far, Silvio felt he had no cause to be otherwise than pleased at the thought that Bianca's own people at Montefiano were likely to interfere with the plans of the Abbé Roux and Monsieur d'Antin. His sense of satisfaction, however, was quickly succeeded by a feeling of uneasiness. Young as he was, he had some experience of what an uneducated mob, with grievances real or fancied, might be capable of doing. He had witnessed strikes in more than one part of Italy; and though it was true that, at Montefiano, disturbances which might occur would be made by peasants and not artisans, he knew how frequently it happened that the uneducated of all classes and occupations lost their heads and went to lengths which neither they nor their leaders perhaps ever contemplated. If Bianca were right, and the rents at Montefiano had been raised through the abbé's instrumentality, and a popular agent dismissed for venturing to oppose the increase, then much would depend on the princess's attitude towards the suggested deputation from her step-daughter's tenants. Should her attitude be unconciliatory, who could tell whether the anger and discontent of the peasantry might not be wreaked on Bianca herself, in whose name these grievances had been inflicted?
Silvio remembered having seen the agent, Fontana, on one occasion during the few days he had spent in the neighborhood of Montefiano; and he had likewise heard Don Agostino mention him as a fattore who was just towards the people as well as honest to his employers. At a crisis such as Bianca's letter pointed to as being imminent, the advice and services of a man like Fontana would have been invaluable to Princess Montefiano; for if the peasants were clamoring for his reinstatement, they certainly would have been more likely to be influenced by him than by strangers.
The idea that Bianca Acorari might be exposed to any danger, however problematical, was quite sufficient to render Silvio restless and uneasy. He wondered whether Don Agostino had been thinking of possible disturbances on the part of the peasants of Montefiano when he had written that in a few days he might have something of importance to communicate. To be sure, Don Agostino had not written again, and now nearly three days had passed since Silvio had received his first letter, enclosing the few lines Bianca had sent him by Concetta Fontana. He would certainly, Silvio told himself, have written, or even perhaps telegraphed, had anything alarming occurred at Montefiano. There was, it would appear, nothing to be done except to wait for Don Agostino's promised letter, or at least until Bianca herself should write again and give him further particulars of how matters were going.
That evening the spell of damp, hot weather, which so often makes Rome almost intolerable in the middle of September, broke. A heavy thunder-storm passed over the city, accompanied by torrents of rain, which descended in white sheets as if in the tropics. A steamy fog rose from the ground, parched by the long summer drought. Masses of inky-black clouds began to drift up from the sea; and at nightfall, long after the storm had rolled away to the mountains, a continuous flicker of lightning illumined the entire sky. In the caffès, or safely in the shelter of their own houses, people congratulated one another that the end of the heat had come, and that when the weather should mend again the first breath of autumn would be felt in the lighter, crisper air.