The Grey Monk. T. W. Speight
him and he had made up his mind to stay there awhile.
He had accordingly taken up his quarters at the principal osteria, kept by one Giuseppe Rispani. Alec lived very simply, and, of late, had learnt to confine his wants within narrow limits, so that his father's allowance, conjointly with his own income of one hundred and eighty pounds a year, amply sufficed for all his needs.
Rispani was a widower with one son, who had lately left home for England in the hope of bettering his fortunes, and one daughter, Giovanna by name, at that time a beautiful girl of nineteen.
Rispani's wife had been an Englishwoman, whom he had married for the sake of her little fortune of five hundred pounds, while she had married him for his beaux yeaux; for in early life the Italian had been a very handsome man, with a soft tongue and a persuasive manner which poor Miss Verinder had found it impossible to resist.
The Signora Rispani, who at one time had been a governess, and, later on, companion to a lady of rank, was a woman of considerable education and refinement. She took great pains with the tuition and bringing up of her daughter, and to her mother Giovanna owed it that she was almost as familiar with the English tongue as the Italian.
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.
The heir of Withington Chase lingered on week after week in the little Italian town till a couple of months had gone by, without caring to ask himself why he did so.
At length the time came when he had neither the power nor the will to tear himself away. Self-deception was a species of weakness in which he had never indulged; he had always dealt frankly with himself, and he did so now. He was in love with the innkeeper's daughter, and he admitted it. More than once, in years gone by, his fancy had been taken captive, but in every case the day had come, and that after no long time, when he had snapped the silken thread that loosely held him, and had gone on his way again, heart whole and fancy free.
But it was no frail silken chain that held him now: he was a helpless captive bound hand and foot in Love's golden fetters.
When, however, he asked himself what prospect there was of his passion being reciprocated, he could but reply that he had no grounds whatever for answering the question in his own favour. That Vanna sought his society and that she derived a certain amount of pleasure from it, could not be doubted; but, on the other hand, every one of those signs was wanting which are supposed to foreshadow the dawn of love in a young girl's heart. She was as easy and unembarrassed in his company as in that of her father, which, of itself; seemed to indicate the absence of any special regard for him. And yet there were times when an inscrutable something glanced at him for a moment out of the depths of her magnificent eyes and kindled a sudden flame of hope in his heart, which, if it quickly died down again, left behind it a certain glow less evanescent than itself.
At length a time arrived when it became clear to Alec that matters between himself and Vanna could not go on much longer as they were. The state of uncertainty in which he lived was fast becoming intolerable to him. Not much longer could he keep silent. He would give words to the passion that was consuming him and win all or lose all by the result.
On more than one occasion in the course of their many talks together, Giovanna had so far opened her mind as to confide to Alec the longing which beset her to get away from the dull and narrow routine of her life in her native town. She wanted to see something of the world, to live a larger and freer existence in some country beyond the sea.
Probably it was owing to the influence of these talks that the inception of the scheme was due which, a few weeks later, Alec embodied in his letter to his father.
Should the latter prove willing to give him the sum he had specified, he would ask Giovanna to become his wife, and if she consented, he would seek with her a home in the New World, where his six thousand pounds would, he confidently hoped, prove the corner-stone from which to build up one of those colossal fortunes in comparison with which the revenues of Withington Chase would seem insignificant indeed. In any case, as he truthfully stated in his letter, he was heartily sick of the idle, purposeless existence he had been leading for a couple of years. For aught he knew to the contrary, his father might never revoke the promise extracted from him not to return to England till leave should be given him to do so.
Meanwhile his life was slowly rusting away.
CHAPTER IV.
AN OFFER AND ITS ACCEPTANCE.
Sir Gilbert Clare and Mr. Page reached Catanzaro in due course. They were met by Alec, who had been apprised by the lawyer of the time when they might be expected to arrive, and who had secured rooms for them at the Golden Fig, the osteria at which he himself had been a guest for so long a time.
Father and son greeted each other with a grave silent bow. Alec flushed to the roots of his hair as soon as he realized that it was Sir Gilbert's intention to treat him as a stranger; then as suddenly