“No, not now. Go away.”
“Has anything happened?”
“Nothing. If I need you, I will ring.”
Pomponio reluctantly retired. He would have given anything to know what sort of a letter that was which had so disturbed his employer.
When he was gone, the Professor sat down in his great armchair, and, with trembling fingers, broke the seal that Maria Lisa Altavilla had never been allowed to do. And this was what he had written in Padua, October 15, 1875:
“Cara Signorina—I have just received the sad announcement, and hasten to assure you of my sincere sympathy in your great grief. Last July, when I had the honor in Venice of being often with your father and yourself, I was a witness of your solicitude for that precious, highly esteemed soul.
“Do you remember (I can never forget it) that morning’s trip to the sea? We had first visited San Lazzaro, where he had been good enough to listen with interest to my explanation in regard to the mummy, preserved in the Museum of the Mechitaristi Fathers; then having crossed to Sant’ Elizabeth on the Lido, we repaired to the baths lately established there. Your father, feeling rather tired, remained in the hotel with a friend while we went to walk on the beach.
“The day was deliciously balmy, the sun’s rays tempered behind little clouds, so that you closed your red silk umbrella. The wavelets lapped the shore softly at our feet where our footprints marked the sand. You confided to me that for several years your father’s Health seemed to grow worse; how the various doctors, who had been called in, had suggested this remedy and that without being at all able to arrest the course of the disease, which was overwhelming you with terror. You told me of the tender affection that led him to hide his suffering from you; he who had never before concealed anything. Growing more confidential, you told me of your happy home life, of the full accord of your mutual thoughts and feelings, of your deep love each for the other, cemented by sorrow; for, from a large family, there now remained but you two in the world. Then, overcome by emotion, you ceased speaking, your eyes full of tears.
“What words struggled for utterance on my part! I can not express all that was in my heart. I am naturally timid, and I will acknowledge a great horror of anything that will distract me from my studies or interfere with my habits; but I feel sure I made you understand, Signorina, how deeply I sympathized with you. I know I told you I was at your service whenever you might choose to call upon me. 'Thanks,’ you murmured gently while your hand trembled in mine. Then you insisted upon going back to your father.
“We spoke no word as we went, but it seemed to me that our souls understood one another. In a day or two you had quitted Venice without my having the opportunity of seeing you again alone.