“Birbone!” said the women, with contempt of Oreste, while the men laughed and shrugged their shoulders. Oreste had caught a pretty sposa who had thought herself much too good for them, but, ma chè,—he was paying for it.
It was impossible that the public curiosity should content itself with being curious. Maria, one of those public-minded souls which never lack in any community, toiled all the way over to Vincigliata, and brought back personal assurance from the nonna herself that that pious granddaughter had not been seen in Vincigliata all these months.
“Eight good miles I trudged in all that sun, and a day’s work lost,” declared Maria, mopping her brow in the midst of an excited and sympathetic group. “If my legs ache! But for the good of the community I did it; and what I know to-night the priest shall know before morning. I made haste to go to-day, for to-morrow, being the festa of our Saint John, Oreste goes to the city, and that civetta—”
And nobody could say but that Maria had done well, and the girl deserved whatever might come of it.
But when the priest, sad-eyed and stern, knocked at the door of the little house in the early morning after Mass, no one was there. Having delivered a vain fusillade, to the accompaniment of many suggestions offered from the neighbors’ windows, the priest turned away and betook himself, with a clouded brow, to the Signore, who had invited him, by Oreste, to breakfast with him that morning. He was waiting for him now on the terrace with a morning countenance; and the breakfast-table, heaped with roses, wore a festal air which did not escape the priest, preoccupied though he was.
“You also are keeping a feast, Signore, to appearances?”
“Yes.”
“Ah, indeed! a festa Americana?”
“No, my own. And now what is it about these two? Oreste, I know, went to the city. I tried to engage him, but he was pre-engaged to that patron of his. And Gioja,—well, I saw her pass a little later.”
“While we were in the church,—the guilty child!” said the priest, sternly. “But where can she have gone?” he added, sighing. “I have been much to blame; I have been too negligent; I should have dealt with her from the first. Culpa mia!” He crossed himself and looked so discouraged that the Signore was touched.