Taquisara | Page 6

finding any real misdeeds to confess. She was willing to believe that she was all that and much more. If she had been living in the whirling, golden pleasure-storm of an utterly thoughtless world, she believed herself bad enough to have shut her memory's eyes to the haggard peasant-mother of the dirty half-clad children--to all the hundreds of them who doubtless lived just like the one she had seen, all upon her lands; she could have forgotten the busy-thieving, sodden-faced crowd that thronged the chambers wherein her fathers had been born and had feasted kings and had died--the very room where her own father had lain dead. She could have shut it all out, she thought, if she had held in her hands the gold that all this brought, to scatter it at her will; for she was sure that she had not a better heart than other girls of her age. But she had never seen it. The reality of her own life was too weak and colourless, by contrast, to make the name of fortune an excuse for the sordid facts of meanness. There was no splendour about her, no wild gaiety, none of the glorious extravagance of conscious young wealth, and there was very little amusement to divert her thoughts. The people she would have liked to know were kept at a distance from her. She was advised not to buy the things which attracted her eyes, and was told that they were not so good as they looked, and that on the whole it was better to keep money than to spend it--but that, of course, she might do as she pleased, and that when she wanted money her uncle Macomer would give it to her.
It all passed through his hands, and he managed everything, with the assistance of Lamberto Squarci the notary and of other men of business--mostly shabby-looking men in black, with spectacles and unhealthy complexions, who came and went in the morning when old Macomer was in his study attending to affairs. Veronica knew none but Squarci by name, and never spoke with any of them. There seemed to be no reason why she should.
The count had told her that when she wished it, he was ready to render an account of the estates and would be happy to explain everything to her at length. She understood nothing of business and was content to accept the roughest statement as he chose to give it to her. She was far too young to distrust the man whom she had been taught to respect as her guardian and as a person of scrupulous honesty. She was completely in his power, and she was accustomed to ask him for any little sums she needed. It never really struck her that he might misuse the authority she indifferently left in his hands.
It was her aunt who had induced her to make the will, and for whose conduct she felt a sort of undefined resentment and contempt. Considering, she thought, how improbable it was that she herself should die before Matilde Macomer, the latter had shown an absurd anxiety about the disposal of the fortune. If Veronica had yielded the point, she had done so in order to get rid of an importunity which wearied her perpetually. She was to marry, of course, in due time. God would give her children, and they would inherit her wealth. It was really ridiculous of her aunt to be so anxious lest it should all go to those distant relations in Sicily and Spain. Nevertheless, in order to have peace, she signed the will, and her aunt thanked her effusively, and old Macomer's flat lips touched her forehead while he spoke a few words of gratified approval.
In the evening she told Bosio, the count's brother, of what she had done. His gentle eyes looked at her thoughtfully for a few seconds, and he did not smile, nor did he make any observation.
A few minutes later he was talking of a picture he had seen for sale--a mere sketch, but by Ribera, called the Spagnoletto. She made up her mind to buy it for him as a surprise, for it pleased her to give him pleasure.
But when she was alone in her room that night she recalled Bosio's expression when she had told him about the will. She was sure that he was not pleased, and she wondered why he had not at least said something in reply--something quite indifferent perhaps, but yet something, instead of looking at her in total silence, just for those few seconds. After all, she was really more intimate with him than with her aunt and uncle, and liked him better than either of them, so that she had a right to expect that he should have