The Grey Monk

by T. W. Speight

Unfortunately the Signora died when Giovanna was about thirteen years old, just the age when a mother’s care and watchfulness were most needed, for the girl’s disposition, like her father’s, was cold, calculating, and avaricious; and when the one person was gone whose untiring effort it had been to keep down the weeds of selfishness and greed of which her nature was so prolific—for the Signora had by no means been blind to her daughter’s defects—it was not difficult to foretell what the result would be.

If Giuseppe Rispani had known anything of the doctrine of heredity, he might have pointed to his daughter as a living example of it as far as the reproduction in her of certain of his own most predominant qualities was concerned.

In appearance Giovanna was a true daughter of the sunny South.

Her figure was tall, with a certain stateliness of carriage that became her well. Her complexion was of the clearest and most transparent olive, her eyes and hair as black as midnight, while her features were almost classic in the regularity of their outlines. In any country in the world Giovanna Rispani would have been accounted a very beautiful young woman.

Vanna had not reached the age of nineteen without having had several suitors, eligible and otherwise, for her hand, but to one and all she had turned a deaf ear. Her father had in no wise tried to influence her choice, being, indeed, firmly persuaded in his own mind that it would have been futile to attempt to do so; but had merely laughed pleasantly as each baffled aspirant went his way, and remarked that Vanna, had plenty of time before her in which to make up her mind.

Alec Clare had not been many days an inmate of the osteria of the Golden Fig before it became clear to Vanna Rispani, that in the tall, handsome young Englishman, she had achieved another conquest.

Vanna had never made a practice of waiting on her father’s guests, holding herself, indeed, somewhat haughtily aloof, but she condescended to wait on Alec. It was not his looks that attracted her, but the fact that in him she found some one who could talk to her in her mother’s native tongue.

She was proud of her ability to speak English, but it was an acquisition which had been in some danger of becoming rusty from disuse; now, however, a day rarely passed without she and Alec having at least one long talk together. To him, too, who had lived for the last two years among what might be termed the byeways of life, it was an inexpressible pleasure to have lighted on some one with whom he could converse in his own tongue; for although by this time he could speak Italian almost as fluently as a native, his thoughts and self-communings were all couched in the language to which he had been born.

Giovanna was wholly free from self-consciousness and mauvaise honte; she was as self-possessed as a woman twice her age; consequently there was a charming ease and naturalness in her intercourse with Alec, which he found increasingly fascinating as time went on.

It was surprising what a number of things they found to talk about, and how naturally one subject seemed to lead up to another. If sometimes Alec’s talk went a little over the girl’s head, if he now and then started a subject which for her was devoid of interest, she was careful not to betray the fact. She might be secretly bored, but her lips never lost their smile, nor her eyes their sparkle.