A Lady of Rome. F. Marion Crawford

and bit it till a tiny drop of blood came, and the pain brought her back.

      When she could speak steadily she sat down near the closed fireplace, before which there was a glass screen; she pointed to an arm-chair opposite, and Castiglione took it.

      Leone had been taught that when visitors came in the afternoon he was to go away after a few minutes without being told to do so. Accordingly, as soon as he saw that his mother and Baldassare were going to talk, he went up to the latter and held out his hand.

      ‘Good-bye,’ he said gravely. ‘The next time you come, please wear your uniform.’

      ‘If I come again, I’ll wear it,’ answered Castiglione, smiling.

      But Maria saw how earnestly his eyes studied the boy’s face, and how he held the small hand as if he did not wish to let it go. He watched the sturdy little fellow till the door was shut, and Maria saw that he checked a sigh. For the first time in years the two were alone together within four walls, and at first there was silence between them.

      Maria spoke first, very coldly and resentfully, for since Leone had left the room she had no reason for hiding what she felt.

      ‘Why have you come?’ she asked. ‘I told you clearly that I did not wish to see you. You said, too, that you would come at three, and when you appeared I was just going to tell Agostino that I would see no one. You came earlier than you said you would, and it was a trick to catch me. Such things are unworthy.’

      Castiglione had clasped his hands on one knee, and he bent his head while she was speaking. When she had finished he looked up with an expression she had never seen in his face, and he spoke in a gentle and almost pleading tone.

      ‘Let me tell you what I have come to Rome to say.’

      ‘I would rather not hear it,’ Maria answered coldly. ‘I would rather that you should say nothing during the few minutes I shall have to let you stay—for I do not wish any one to think that I have turned you out of my house.’

      Her face was like a mask, and white, for it cost her much to say the words.

      ‘I have not come to persecute you, Maria,’ he answered sorrowfully. ‘I have not loved you faithfully all these years to come and pain you now.’

      Maria Montalto’s lip curled.

      ‘Faithfully!’ The contemptuous tone told all her unbelief.

      ‘Yes, I mean it. I have loved you faithfully since we parted, as I loved you before.’

      ‘I do not believe you; or I do not understand what you mean by faith.’

      ‘It is easy to understand. Since you and I parted under the ilex-trees I have not spoken of love to any woman. I have lived a clean life.’

      Something clutched at the woman’s heart just then, but the next moment she spoke as coldly as before.

      ‘It is easy to say such things,’ she answered.

      ‘What I say is true,’ returned Castiglione quietly. ‘But if I tell you this of myself, it is not because I hope to bring your love to life again. I know how dead that is. I know I killed it—yes, I know!’

      He spoke with the tone and accent of a man in great pain, and looked down at his clasped hands; but Maria turned her face from him, for she felt the clutching at her heart again. He must not know that he was wrong, and that she loved him still in spite of everything. She would force herself not to believe him.

      ‘How well you act!’ she said, with cruel scorn.

      He did not resent even that. He had violently broken and ruined her whole life long ago; why should she be kind to him?

      ‘I am not acting, and I am not lying,’ he answered gravely. ‘I have been faithful to you all these years. It is no credit to me, and I ask none, for I love you truly.’

      ‘How am I to believe you?’ Maria asked, not contemptuously now, but still coldly. ‘Why should I?’

      He raised his eyes and met hers steadily, and she saw that there was no mistaking the truth.

      ‘I give you my word of honour,’ he said slowly, and waited.

      She could not speak then, because her joy was so great, in spite of herself; and he would not say more; he only waited while she looked steadily at the mantelpiece, choking down something and hoping that he could not see her face clearly in the rather dim light. He would not stoop to ask if she believed his word, and she was dumb. It was too much, all at once.

      Presently, when she thought she could trust her voice, she tried to speak. It had seemed a long time.

      ‘It is——’ she began.

      But she broke off, for she felt the great cry coming in the word that should have followed. Therefore instead of speaking she held out her hand to him and turned her face away from his. They were just so near that by leaning far forward he could hold her fingers. He pressed them quietly for one moment, a little hard, perhaps, but with no attempt to hold them.

      ‘Thank you,’ he said, not very steadily.

      She had regretted the little impulsive action at once, expecting that he would kiss her hand, as almost any man might have done with less reason. But she was glad that he had not; glad, and grateful to him. Perhaps he knew it, but she was able to speak now; he should not think that he had gained a hairbreadth’s advantage.

      ‘I am glad that you have lived a good life,’ she said, much more kindly than she had spoken yet. ‘But you must not call it faithfulness. You must not mean that you have been faithful to the memory of a great sin, of the worst deed you ever did. It would have been much better to forget me.’

      ‘You do not understand,’ he answered. ‘My sins are on my soul, and yours with them, if you have any. I am wicked enough to hope that I may never forget you, and that I may live till I die as I have lived since we parted. It is the least I can do, not for your sake, but out of respect for myself and regret for the worst deed I ever did. Yes, you are right, it was that. The question that fills my life is this: Can I in any way atone to you for that deed? Can you ever forgive me so far as not to hate me, and not to despise the mere thought of me, so far as to be willing that I should live in the same city with you and see you sometimes?’

      He waited for her answer, but it was long before it came. When she tried to collect her thoughts she was amazed and frightened by the change that had come over her in the last few minutes. Her impulse was to confess frankly that she had always loved him, though she could not forgive him, and to implore him to go away and never to come near her again; and then she remembered that she had said those very words to him long ago under the ilex-trees in the Villa Borghese, with many cruel ones which neither had forgotten. He had given up his leave then, and had gone back to his regiment in a distant city, and he had never come near her nor written to her since.

      But there was more than that, much more. He had lived a clean life. She knew the world well enough now, and she knew what the lives of most unmarried men are at Castiglione’s age. Had she not a son to bring up, for whom she prayed daily that he might grow to manhood without reproach as well as without fear? She knew something of how men lived, and she could guess, as far as an honest woman may, at the daily temptations that must assail a good-looking young officer in the smartest cavalry regiment in the country; she guessed, too, that one who chose to live very differently from most of his comrades might not always escape jests which would not turn to actual ridicule only because Castiglione was not a man to be laughed at with impunity; not by any means.

      She believed him, and though she might tell him that he was faithful to a sin, to something dangerously near a crime, his faith had been for her, and she could not deny it to herself. It was for her sake that he had not lived like the rest.

      Then she covered her eyes with her hand and she saw her own past life clearly, and dared to look at it. The ugly blot was there, plain enough; but if the fault had really been all