a less perfect devotion. Indeed, was
not his proposed marriage too much like taking her only son from the
signora and giving the Paronsina a stepmother? It was worse, and so the
ladies of the notary's family viewed it, cherishing a resentment that
grew with Tonelli's delay to deal frankly with them; while Carlotta, on
her part, was wounded that these old friends should ignore his future
wife so utterly. On both sides evil was stored up.

When Tonelli would still make a show of fidelity to the Paronsina and
her mother, they accepted his awkward advances, the latter with a cold
visage, the former with a sarcastic face and tongue. He had managed
particularly ill with the Paronsina, who, having no romance of her own,
would possibly have come to enjoy the autumnal poetry of his love if he
had permitted. But when she first approached him on the subject of those
rumors she had heard, and treated them with a natural derision, as
involving the most absurd and preposterous ideas, he, instead of
suffering her jests, and then turning her interest to his favor,
resented them, and closed his heart and its secret against her. What
could she do, thereafter, but feign to avoid the subject, and adroitly
touch it with constant, invisible stings? Alas! it did not need that she
should ever speak to Tonelli with the wicked intent she did; at this
time he would have taken ill whatever most innocent thing she said. When
friends are to be estranged, they do not require a cause. They have but
to doubt one another, and no forced forbearance or kindness between them
can do aught but confirm their alienation. This is on the whole
fortunate, for in this manner neither feels to blame for the broken
friendship, and each can declare with perfect truth that he did all he
could to maintain it. Tonelli said to himself, "If the Paronsina had
treated the affair properly at first!" and the Paronsina thought, "If he
had told me frankly about it to begin with!" Both had a latent heartache
over their trouble, and both a sense of loss the more bitter because it
was of loss still unacknowledged.

As the day fixed for Tonelli's wedding drew near, the rumor of it came
to the Cenarotti from all their acquaintance. But when people spoke to
them of it, as of something they must be fully and particularly informed
of, the signora answered coldly, "It seems that we have not merited
Tonelli's confidence"; and the Paronsina received the gossip with an air
of clearly affe