Chapter XV: "my Lady and My Love." (2)

The girl heard the flutter of Antonia's muslin gown, and looked up, with her foot upon her spade. She wiped the perspiration from her forehead with a gaudy cotton handkerchief.

"May I take one of your roses?" Antonia asked, smiling at her across the gap in the hedge.

"Si, si," cried Francesca, "as many as the signorina likes. There are plenty of them."

She ran to the hedge and began to pluck the roses, in an eager hospitality. She was dazzled by the vision of the beautiful face, the yellow hat and snowy plumes, the diamond buckle flashing in the sun, and something in the smile that puzzled her. Without being conscious of the likeness between the stranger's face and that one she saw every morning unflatteringly reflected in the dusky little glass under her bedroom window, she had a feeling of familiarity with the violet eyes, the sunny smile.

Antonia thanked her for her roses, admired her garden, questioned her about her brother and sisters, and was at once on easy terms with her. Yes, they were motherless, and she had taken care of them ever since Etta, the baby, was a fortnight old. Yes, she worked hard every day; but she loved work, and when the vintage was good they were all happy. Grandfather had not been able to work for over a year; he was very old--"_vecchio vecchio_"--and very weak.

"I hope you have relations who help you," said Antonia, "distant relations, perhaps, who are richer than your grandfather?"

"No, there is no one. We had an aunt, but she is dead. She died before I was born. Grandfather says I am like her. It makes him cry sometimes to look at me, and to remember that he will never see her again! She was his favourite daughter."

"And was your grandfather always poor--always living here, on this little vineyard and garden?" Antonia asked, pale, and with an intent look in her eyes.

Had she found them, the kindred for whom she had been looking, in these simple peasants, these sons and daughters of toil, so humbly born, without a history, the very off-scouring of the earth? Was this the end of her father's fairy tale, this the lowly birthplace of the Italian bride, the daughter of a noble house, who had fled with the English tutor, who had stooped from her high estate to make a love match?

She remembered her father's reluctance to take her to her mother's home, or even to tell her the locality. She remembered how he had shuffled and prevaricated, and put off the subject, and she thought with bitter shame of his falsehoods, his sophistications. Alas, why had he feared to tell her the truth? Would she have thought less lovingly of her dead mother because of her humble lineage? Surely not! But she had been fooled by lies, had thought of herself as the daughter of a patrician race, and had cherished romantic dreams of a line of soldiers and statesmen, whose ambitions and aspirations, whose courage and genius, were in her blood.

The dilapidated walls yonder, the painted shutters rotten with age, the gaudy daub of Virgin and Child on the plastered façade, the garden of cabbages and pumpkins, and the patch of tall Indian corn! What a disillusion! How sorry an end of her dreams!

"Sicuro!" the girl answered, wondering at the fine lady's keen look. She had been questioned often about herself, often noticed by people of quality, on account of her beauty; but this lady had such an earnest air. "Si, si, signorina," she said; "grandfather has always lived here. He was born in our cottage. His father was gardener to the Marchese" (the grand seigneur of the district, name understood). "And he bought the vineyard with his savings when he was an old man. He was a very good gardener."

"May I see your grandfather?"

"Sicuro! He will be pleased to see the signorina," the girl answered readily, accustomed to be patronized by wandering strangers, and to receive little gifts from them.

Antonia followed her into the cottage. An old man was sitting in an armchair by the hearth, where an iron pot hung over a few smouldering sticks and a heap of grey ashes. He looked up at Antonia with eyes that saw all things dimly. The sunshine streamed into the room from the open door and window; but her face was in shadow as she went towards him with outstretched hand, Francesca explaining that the English lady wished to see him.

The patriarch tried to rise from his chair, but Antonia stopped him, seating herself by his side.

"I saw your grand-daughter at the festa," she said, "and I wanted to see more of her, if I could. Can you guess why I was anxious about her, and anxious to be her friend?"

She took off her hat, while the old man looked at her with a slow wonder, his worn-out eyes gradually realizing the lines in the splendid face.

"I have been told that your Francesca is like me," she said. "Can you see any resemblance?"

"_Santo e santissimo!_ Si, si, the signorina is like Francesca, as two peaches side by side on the wall yonder; and she is like my daughter, my Tonia, my beloved, who died more than twenty years ago. But she is not dead to me--no, not to me. I see her face in my dreams. I hear her voice sometimes as I wake out of sleep, and then I look round, and call her, and she is not there; and I remember that I am an old man, and that she left me many, many years ago."

"You had a daughter called Antonia?"

"_Si, signorina_. It was her mother's name also. I called her Tonia. She was the handsomest girl between the two lakes. Everybody praised her, a good girl, as industrious as she was virtuous. A good and dutiful daughter till the Englishman stole her from us."

"Your Antonia married an Englishman?"

"Si, signorina! 'Twas thought a fine marriage for her. He wore a velvet coat, and he called himself a gentleman; but he was only a schoolmaster, and he came to Varenna in a coach and six with a young English milord."

"What was the tutor's name?"

"_Non posso pronunziar' il suo nome._ Tonton, Tonton, Guilliamo."

"Thornton! William Thornton?"

"_Ecco!_" cried the old man, nodding assent. "We had a dairy then, my wife and I," he continued, "and the young lord and his governor used to leave their boat and walk up the hill to get a drink of milk. They paid us handsomely, and we got to look for them every day, and they would stop and talk and laugh with my two girls. The governor could speak Italian almost like one of us; and the young milord was trying to learn; and they used all of them to laugh at his mistakes, and make a fool of him. Well, well, 'twas a merry time for us all."

"Did you consent to your daughter's marriage?"

"_Chi lo sa? Forse! Non diceva nè si nè no._ He was a gentleman, and I was proud that she should marry above her station. But he told me a bundle of lies. He pretended to be a rich man, and promised that he would bring her to Italy once a year. And then he took her away, in milord's coach, and they were married at Chiavenna, where he lied to the priest, as he had lied to me, and swore he was a good Catholic. He sent me the certificate of their marriage, so that I might know my daughter was an honest woman; but he never let me see her again."

He paused in a tearful mood.

"Perhaps it was not his own fault that he did not keep his promise," Antonia pleaded. "He may have been too poor to make such a journey."

"Yes, he was as poor as Job. Tonia wrote to me sometimes, and she told me they were very poor, and that she hated her English home, and pined for the garden and the vineyard, and the hills and lakes. She was afraid she would die without ever seeing us again. Her letters were full of sorrow. I could see her tears upon the page. And then there came a letter from him, with a great black seal. She was dead--_Ma non si muove foglia che Iddio non voglia_. 'Tis not for me to complain!"

The feeble frame was shaken by the old man's sobs. Antonia knelt on the brick floor by his chair, and soothed him with gentle touches and soft words. She was full of tender pity; but there was the feeling that she was stooping from her natural level to comfort a creature of a lower race, another order of being, with whom she could have no sympathy.

And he was her grandfather. His blood was in her veins. From him she inherited some of the qualities of her heart and brain: not from statesmen or heroes, but from a peasant, whose hands were gnarled and roughened by a lifetime's drudgery, whose thoughts and desires had never travelled beyond his vineyard and patch of Indian corn.

Her grandfather, living in this tumble-down old house, where the rotten shutters offered so poor a defence against foul weather, the floods and winds of autumn and winter, where the crumbling brick floor had sunk below the level of the soil outside: living as peasants live, and suffering all the deprivations and hardships of extreme poverty, while she, his own flesh and blood, had squandered thousands upon the caprices of a woman of fashion. And she found him worn out with toil, old and weak, on the brink of the grave perhaps. Her wealth could do but little for him.

She had no doubt of his identity. The story of his daughter's marriage was her mother's story.

There was no room for doubt, yet she shrank with a curious restraint from revealing the tie that bound her to him. She was full of generous pity for a long life that had known so few of this world's joys; but the feeling of caste was stronger than love or pity. She was ashamed of herself for feeling such bitter mortification, such a cruel disappointment. Oh, foolish pride which she had taken for an instinct of good birth! Because she was beautiful and admired, high-spirited and courageous, she must needs believe that she sprang from a noble line, and could claim all the honour due to race. Her father had lied to her, and she had believed the flattering fable. She could not reconcile herself to the humiliating truth so far as to claim her new-found kindred. But she was bent upon showing them all possible kindness short of that revelation. They were so poor, so humble, that she might safely play the part of benefactress. They had no pride to be crushed by her favours. She questioned the old man about his health, while the girl stood by the doorway listening, and the children's silvery voices sounded in the garden outside. Had he been ill long; did he suffer much; had he a doctor? He had been ailing a long time, but as for suffering, well, he had pains in his limbs, the house was damp in winter, but there was more weakness than suffering. "Also the ass when he is tired lies down in the middle of the road, and can go no farther," he said resignedly. As for a doctor; no, he had no need of one. The doctor would only bleed him; and he had too little blood as it was. One of his neighbours--an old woman that some folks counted a witch, but a good Catholic for all that--had given him medicine of her own making that had done him good.

"I think a doctor would do you more good, if you would see one. There is a doctor at Bellagio who came to see my woman the other day when she had a touch of fever. He seemed a clever man."

"_Si signorina, ma senza denari non si canta messa._ Clever men want to be paid. Your doctor would cost me the eyes of the head."

"You shall have as much money as ever you want," answered Antonia, pulling a long netted purse from her pocket.

The gold showed through the silken meshes, and the old man's eyes glittered with greed as he looked at it. She filled his tremulous hands with guineas, emptying both ends of the purse into his hollowed palms. He had never seen so much gold. The strangers who came to sit under his _pergola_, and drink great bowls of new milk from the fawn-coloured cows that were his best source of income, thought themselves generous if they gave him a _scudo_ at parting: but here was a visitor from fairyland raining gold into his hands.

"They are English guineas, and you will gain by the exchange," she said, "so you can have the physician to see you every day. He will not want to bleed you when he sees how weak you are."

The old man shook his head doubtfully. They were so ready with the lancet, those doctors! His eyes were fixed on the guineas, as he tried to reckon them. The coins lay in too close a heap to be counted easily.

He broke into a rapture of gratitude, invoking every saint in the calendar, and Antonia shivered with pain at the exaggeration of his acknowledgments. He thanked her as a wayside beggar would have done. His benedictions were the same as the professional mendicants, the maimed and halt and blind, gave her when she dropped a coin into a basket or a hat. He belonged to the race which is accustomed to taking favours from strangers. He belonged to the sons of bondage, poverty's hereditary slaves.

She appealed to Francesca.

"Would it not be better for your grandfather if he lived at Bellagio, where he would have a comfortable house in a street, and plenty of neighbours?" she asked.

"I don't think he would like to leave the vineyard, Signorina; though it would be very pleasant to live in the town," answered Francesca.

Her dark eyes sparkled at the thought. It was lonely on the hill, where she had only the children to talk to, and her grandfather, whose conversation was one long lamentation.

The old man looked up with a scared expression.

"_Ohime! Non posso!_" he exclaimed, "I could not leave the villino. I shall die as I have lived, in the villino!"

"Well, you must do what is best pleasing to yourself," Antonia said. "All I desire is that you should be happy, and enjoy every comfort that money can buy."

She bent down and kissed the sunburnt forehead, so wrinkled and weather-beaten after the long life of toil. She asked Francesca to walk a little way with her; and they went out into the lane together.

"Your house looks comfortless even in sunshine," Antonia said. "It must be worse in winter!"

"_Si, signorina._ It is very cold in bad weather, but grandfather loves the villino."

"You might get a carpenter to mend the windows and put new hinges on the shutters. They look as if they would hardly shut."

"Indeed, signorina, 'tis long since our shutters have been shut. Grandfather is too poor to pay a carpenter. Nothing in the house has been mended since I can remember."

"But you have your cows and your vineyard. How is it that he is so poor?"

The girl shrugged her shoulders. She knew nothing.

"Is it you who keeps the purse?"

"No, no, _signorina, non so niente_. Grandfather gives me money to pay the baker----"

"And the butcher?"

"We do not buy meat. I kill a fowl sometimes, or a rabbit; but for the most part we have cabbage soup and polenta."

"Well, you will have plenty of money in future. I shall see to that; and you must take care that your grandfather has good food every day, and a doctor when he is ailing, and warm blankets for winter. I want you both to be happy and well cared for. And you must get a man to dig in the garden and carry water for you. I don't like to see a girl work as you do."

Francesca stared at the beautiful lady in open wonder. She was doubtless mad as a March hare, la Poverina; but what a delightful form her madness had taken. It might be that the Blessed Virgin had inspired this madness, and sent this lovely lunatic wandering from house to house among the deserving poor, scattering gold wherever she found want and piety. It was almost a miracle. Indeed, who could be sure that this benign lady was not the Blessed One herself, who could appear in any manner she pleased, even arrayed in the latest fashion of plumed hats and India muslin _négligées?_

Antonia left the girl a little way from the villino, and walked slowly down the hill to Bellagio, deep in thought. Alas, alas, to have found her mother's kindred, and to feel no thrill of love, no yearning to take them to her heart, only the same kind of pity she had felt for those poor wretches in Lambeth Marsh, only an eager desire to make their lot happier, to give them all good things that money can buy.

"Should I grow to love that old man if I knew him better?" she wondered. "Is there some dormant affection in my heart, some hereditary love that needs but to be warmed into life by time and custom? God knows what I am made of. I do not feel as if I could ever care for that poor old man as grandfathers are cared for. My mother's father, and he loved her dearly! It is base ingratitude in me not to love him."

She recalled the greedy look that came into the withered old face at sight of the gold. A painter need have asked no better model for Harpagon. She would have given much not to have seen that look.

She would visit them often, she thought, and would win him to softer moods. She would question him about her mother's girlhood, beguile him into fond memories of the long-lost daughter, memories of his younger days, before grinding poverty had made him so eager for gold. She would make herself familiar with Bari and his granddaughter, find out all their wants, all their desires, and provide for the welfare of the old life that was waning, and the young life with a long future before it. She would make age and youth happy, if it were possible. But she would not tell them of the relationship that made it her duty to care for them. She would let them remember her as the eccentric stranger, who had found them in poverty, and left them in easy circumstances; the benefactress dropped from the clouds.

To what end should she tell them of kinship if she could not give them a kinswoman's love? And she could not. The girl was a beautiful creature, kindly, gentle, caressing; but she was a peasant, a peasant whose thoughts had never travelled beyond the narrow circle of her hills, whose rough knuckles and thick fingers told of years of toil, who had not one feeling in common with the cousin bred upon books, and plunged in the morning of youth into the most enlightened society in Christendom, the London of Walpoles and Herveys, Carterets and St. Johns, Pitts and Foxes.

She would not tell them. She could not imagine her lips framing the words. She could not say to Francesca, "We are first cousins, the next thing to sisters." But she could make them happy. That was possible. She could take all needful measures to provide them with a substantial income; a competence which should enable them to rebuild the rotten old villa, and spend the rest of their days in ease and plenty.

Lord Dunkeld called on her in the evening, and took a dish of tea with the two ladies in their garden betwixt sunset and moonrise. He found Antonia looking pale and tired.

"She started on one of her solitary rambles early this morning," Sophy said; "as if any one ought to walk in this climate, and she was as white as her muslin gown when she came home. She had much better have idled with me in the boat."

"I did not go far," Antonia said, "but I found some interesting people--only peasants. The girl your lordship noticed yesterday in the procession."

"The girl who is so like you?" exclaimed Dunkeld. "I thought your ladyship was a stranger to at least one of the deadly sins, and knew no touch of vanity. But I find you are mortal, and that you had a fancy to see a face like your own."

"Yes, I had a fancy to see the girl. And now I want to help her, if I can. She is desperately poor."

"Is anybody poor in Italy? I have always thought that Italian peasants live upon sunshine and a few ripe figs, and have no use for money."

"They are very poor. The grandfather is old, and ailing. Can you find me an honest lawyer here, or at Varenna?"

"For your ladyship I would attempt miracles. I will do my best."

"And as quickly as you can, my lord, for I want to go back to England."

"Grant me the felicity of escorting you when you go, and make me your slave in the mean time; though, as I am always that, madam, 'tis a one-sided bargain."

"Oh, pray come in our coach with us, my lord," cried Sophy. "I was in a panic all the way here, on account of the brigands."

"Heavens! Was your coach attacked?"

"No, no, sir," said Antonia, laughing. "The brigands came no nearer than a vague rumour that some of their calling had been heard of above Andermatt."

"But who knows what may happen when we are going home, now that the days are so much shorter?" protested Sophy.

"If one strong arm and a pair of pistols can help you, Miss Potter----"

"Oh, I shall feel ever so much safer with your lordship in our coach. I know if those wretches came--with black masks, perhaps--Giuseppe would run away."

Giuseppe was the Italian footman, whom Sophy suspected of being a poor-spirited creature, in spite of a figure which would have delighted the late King of Prussia.

Antonia went to the villino on the following afternoon, and being unable to shake off Lord Dunkeld, allowed him to accompany her. She liked his conversation, which diverted her thoughts from brooding upon the past, and on George Stobart's peril in the wild world across the Atlantic. He filled the place of that brilliant society which had been her anodyne for every grief; and she was grateful to him for a steadfastness in friendship which promised to last for a lifetime. His colder temperament had allowed him to put off the lover and assume the friend. He had been strong as a granite pillar where George Stobart had proved a broken reed.

They found the girl tying up the vine branches in a long berceau, and the old man sitting by the smouldering ashes as he had sat yesterday, in a monotony of idleness. The windows had not been mended, and the shutters still hung forlornly upon broken hinges.

Antonia asked the girl if she had not been able to find a carpenter to do the work.

"Grandfather would not let a carpenter come. He is afraid of the noise."

"And when bad weather comes the rain will come in."

"_Si, signorina;_ the rain always comes in."

"And your broken shutters cannot keep out the cold winds."

"No, signorina; the wind almost blows grandfather out of his chair sometimes."

"Then he really ought to let a carpenter come."

The old man was listening intently, and Dunkeld was watching his face.

"They are brigands, those carpenters," he said. "'Tis a waste of money to employ them. I don't mind the wind, signorina. Francia can hang up a curtain."

"Oh, grandfather, the curtain is an old rag! And the signorina gave you money to pay the carpenter."

"_Andiamo adagio, carissima._ I am not going to waste the signorina's money on idlers and cheats, nor yet upon doctors. I hate doctors! They are knaves, bloodthirsty rogues that want to be paid for sticking a knife into a man as if he were a pig!"

Antonia did not argue the point, and left the old man after a few kindly words. She was disgusted at his obstinacy, which made it so hard a matter to improve his circumstances. She walked some way in silence, Dunkeld at her side.

"I fear your new _protégé_ is a troublesome subject," he said, "and that you will find a difficulty in helping him."

"I cannot understand his objection to having that wretched old barn made wind and weather tight."

"I can. The man is a miser. You have given him money, and he wants to keep it, to hide it under his mattress, perhaps, and gloat over it in the dead of the night. The miser has a keener joy in the touch of a guinea than in any indulgence of meat or drink, warmth and comfort, that money can buy."

"I fear your lordship has guessed the riddle," Antonia answered, wounded to the quick. "I gave him all the gold in my purse yesterday. 'Twas at least twenty guineas. Well, I must take other means. I will send a carpenter to do all the work that is wanted, and take the Bellagio doctor to the villino to-morrow morning."

"Will your ladyship be offended if I presume to advise?"

"Offended! I shall think you vastly kind."

"Leave these people alone. The old man is unworthy of your protection. The girl is happy in her present condition. Your bounty will but administer to her grandfather's avarice, and will not better her life."

"But I must help them--I must, I must," Antonia protested. "It is my duty. I cannot let them suffer the ills of poverty while I am rich. I must find some way to make their lives easy."

Dunkeld wondered at her vehemence, and pursued the argument no further. This passion of charity was but an instinct of her generous nature, the desire to share fortune's gifts with the unfortunate.

She returned from this second visit dispirited and unhappy. Was she doomed never to be able to esteem those whom she was bound to love? She had loved her father fondly, though she had known him unprincipled and shifty; but what affection could she feel for this old man against whom her class instinct revolted, unless she could find in him humble virtues that could atone for humble birth? And she found him sordid, untruthful, avaricious.

She called on the local doctor next morning, and went with him to the villino, where he diagnosed the old man's ailments as only old age, the weakness induced by poor food, and the rheumatic symptoms that were the natural result of living in a draughty house. He recommended warmth and a generous diet, and promised to call once a week through the coming winter, his fee for each visit being something less than an English shilling.

After he had gone Antonia sat in the garden with Baptisto Bari and his granddaughter for an hour. She had his chair carried into the sunshine, and out of the way of the noise, while a couple of workmen mended the windows and shutters. She had found a builder in Bellagio, and had instructed him to do all that could be done to make the house comfortable before winter. He was to get the work done with the least possible inconvenience to the family.

Sitting in the quiet garden, while Francesca gathered beans for the soup, and while the children sprawled in the sun, playing with some toys Antonia had brought them, Bari was easily lured into talking of the past, and of the daughter he had loved. All that was best in his nature revealed itself when he talked of his sorrow; and Antonia thought that the miser's despicable passion had only grown upon him after the loss that had, perhaps, blighted his life. And then, when he was an old man, death had taken his remaining daughter; and he had been left, lonely and heart-broken, with his orphan grandchildren. He had begun to scrape and pinch for their support, most likely; and then the miser's insane love of money had grown upon him, like some insidious disease.

Antonia tried to interest him, and to make excuses for him, and she spoke to him very plainly upon the money question. She appealed even to his selfishness.

"When I give you money, it is that you may have all the good things that money can buy," she said; "good wine and strengthening food, warm clothes, a comfortable bed. What is the use of a few guineas in a cracked teacup, or hidden in a corner of your mattress?"--Baptisto almost jumped out of his chair, and she knew she had hit upon the place of his treasure. "What is the use of hoarding money that other people will spend and waste, perhaps, when you are dead?"

"No, no, she will not waste it. _Che Diavolo!_ She will give me a handsome funeral, and spend all the rest on masses for the good of my soul. That is what she will have to do."

"You need not save money for that. If you live comfortably your life will be prolonged, most likely; and I promise that you shall have a handsome funeral, and the--the masses."

She went again next day, and on the day after, always alone; and the old man became more and more at his ease with her; but all that she did was done for duty's sake, and she found it harder work to talk to him than it had been to talk with poor dying Sally Dormer, by whose bedside she had spent many quiet hours. The abyss between them was wider. But she felt more affectionately towards Francesca, who adored her almost as if she were indeed the celestial lady whose miraculous presence every good Catholic is prepared to meet at any solemn crisis of life.

Antonia did not rest till, with the assistance of a banker and lawyer at Varenna, she had settled an income of three hundred pounds a year upon Baptisto, with reversion to his grandchildren, she herself acting as trustee in conjunction with the banker, who was partner in an old-established banking house at Milan, of which the Varenna bank--in a pavilion in an angle of a garden wall--was a branch.

This done, her mind was at ease, and she prepared for her journey to England. She would return, as she had come, by the Low Countries, avoiding France on account of the war.

Lord Dunkeld had advised and assisted her in making the settlement on the Baris, but she knew that he thought her foolish and quixotic in her determination to provide for this particular family.

"I could find you a score of claimants for your bounty, far more pathetic cases than Baptisto, if you are so set upon playing the good angel," he said. "'Tis a mercy you do not want to provide for the whole pauper population upon the same magnificent scale. Three hundred a year for an Italian peasant! But a woman's charity is ever a romantic impulse; and one can but admire her tenderness, though one may question her discretion."

"I may have a reason you cannot fathom," Antonia said gravely.

"Oh, 'tis the heart moves you to this act, not the reason! This world would be happier if all women were as unreasonable."

She despised herself for suppressing the motive of her bounty. To be praised for generosity, while she was ashamed to acknowledge her own kindred, ashamed of her own lowly origin! What could be meaner or more degrading? But she thought of Dunkeld's thousand years' pedigree, the pride of birth, the instinct of race, which he had so often revealed unconsciously in their familiar talk; and it was difficult to sink her own pride before so proud a man.

The last day came, and he insisted on accompanying her in her farewell visit. She had given him the privileges of a trusted friend, and had no excuse for refusing his company.

She told Baptisto Bari what she had done for him.

"You will have seventy-five pounds paid you every quarter," she said; "and all you have to do is to spend your money freely, and let Francesca buy everything that is wanted for you, and the children, and herself. I shall come back next year, and I shall be very sorry and very angry if I do not find you living in comfort, and the villino looking as handsome as a nobleman's villa."

The old man protested his gratitude, with tears. Yes, he would spend his money. He had been spending it. See, there was the magnificent new curtain; and he had a pillow for his bed; and a barrel of oil for the lamp. They had the lamp lighted every night. And he had coffee--a dish of coffee on Sunday--and they had been drinking their milk, and making butter for themselves, instead of selling all the milk to the _negozio_ in Bellagio. Indeed, he had discovered that money was a very useful thing when one spent it; though it was also useful to keep it against the day of misfortune or death.

"True, m'amico; but it is bad economy to keep your money under your pillow, and let your house fall over your ears for want of mending," answered Antonia; and then she bade him good-bye--good-bye till next year, and bent down to kiss the withered forehead, above white pent-house eyebrows.

The keen old eyes clouded over with tears as her lips touched him, and the tremulous old hands were joined in prayer that God and the Saints might reward her piety.

She opened her arms to Francesca, who fell upon her breast, sobbing.

"Ah, sweetest lady, had the poor ever such a friend, ever such a benefactor? Heaven sent you to us. We pray for you night and day, for your happiness on earth, for your soul's bliss in heaven," cried the girl, in her melodious Italian.

Antonia could scarcely drag herself away from the clinging arms, the tears and benedictions; but she left Francesca at the garden gate, and amid all those tears and kisses had not revealed herself to her kindred.

She crossed the hill in silence, Dunkeld at her side, watching her thoughtful countenance, and perplexed by its almost tragic gloom.

"You are a wonderful woman," he said lightly, by-and-by, to break the spell of silence. "You take these Italian peasants to your heart as if they were your own flesh and blood. Is it the Italian blood in your veins that opens your heart to beings of so different a race?"

"Perhaps."

"I could understand your letting the girl hug you--a creature so lovely, and in the bloom and freshness of youth. But that wrinkled old miser! Well, 'twas a divine charity that moved you to squander a kiss upon that parchment brow."

Antonia turned to him in a sudden tumult of feeling, remorse, shame, self-disparagement.

"Oh, stop, stop!" she cried. "Your words scald me like molten lead. Divine charity! Why, I am the most despicable of women. I hate myself for my paltry pride. I can bear the shame of it no longer. 'Twill be your lordship's turn to scorn me as I scorn myself. That old man is my mother's father. I came to Italy to hunt for her kindred, to find in what palace she was reared, from what princely race I inherited my haughty spirit. And a chance, the chance likeness between Francesca and me, resulted in the discovery that I came of a long line of peasants, servants, the tillers of the ground, the race that lives by submissive toil, that has never known independence. And I was ashamed of them--bitterly ashamed. It was anguish to me to know that I sprang from that humble stock, most of all when I thought of you, your warriors, and statesmen, bishops, judges--all the long line of rulers and master minds, stretching back into the dark night of history, part of yourself; for if they had never lived you could not be what you are."

"Oh, madam, you own a more noble lineage than Scottish Thanes can boast of. The seaborn Venus had no ancestors, but was queen of the earth by the divine right of beauty. You are a daughter of the gods, and may easily dispense with a parchment pedigree."

"Oh, pray, sir, no idle compliments! I would rather suffer your contempt than your mocking praise. I can scarcely be more despicable in your esteem than I am in my own."

"I could never think ill of you, my sweet friend; never doubt the nobility of your heart and mind. The test has been a severe one; for to a woman the death of a romantic dream means much; but the gold rings true. You had a right to keep this secret from me if you pleased."

"And from them?"

"That is a nicer question. I doubt it is your duty to make them happier by the knowledge that they have a legitimate claim to your bounty. I think you would do well to disclose your relationship to them before you leave Italy. The old man may not live till your return; and the thought that pride had come between you and one so near in blood might be a lasting regret."

"Yes, yes, your lordship is right. I will see them again this evening. I will tell my grandfather who and what I am. Yes, it was odious of me to play the Lady Bountiful, to let him praise me for generosity--me, his daughter's child. Sure I am glad I made my confession to you, for now I know that you are my true friend."

"I will never advise you ill, if I can help it, madam," he said, stooping to kiss her hand. "And doubt not that you can trust me with every secret of your heart and mind, for there can exist no feeling or thought in either that is not common to generous natures."

* * * * *

Lady Kilrush spent the sunset hour with her kindred, and was touched by the old man's delight when he clasped to his heart the child of that daughter he had loved and mourned. She knelt beside him with uncovered head as she told him the story of her childhood, her love for the mother she had lost before memory began. He turned her face to the sunset glow, and gazed at her with eyes drowned in tears. He was no longer the money-grubber, keenly expectant of a stranger's bounty. The whole nature of the man seemed changed by the awakening of an unforgotten love.

"Yes, it is Tonia's face," he cried. "I knew you were beautiful; I knew you were like her; but not how like. Your brow has the same lines, your lips have the same curves. Yes, now, as you smile at me, I see my beloved one again."

There was nothing sordid or vulgar in the peasant now. His countenance shone with the pure light of love, and Antonia's heart went out to him with some touch of filial affection.

Before they parted he gave her a letter--the ink dim with age--her mother's last letter, written from the Lincolnshire homestead where she died; and Antonia read of the love that had hung over her cradle, that tender maternal love she had been fated never to know.

She deferred her journey for a few days, at her grandfather's entreaty, and spent many hours at the villino. She encouraged Baptisto and Francesca to talk to her of all the details of their lives. She drew nearer to them in thought and feeling, and made new plans for their happiness, promising to come to Bellagio every autumn, and offering to build them a new house next year at the other end of their garden where the view was finer. But the old man protested that the villino would last his time, and that he would never like any house as well.

"Then the new house must be built for Francesca when she marries," Antonia told him gaily. "We will wait till she has a suitor she loves."