ove him.

"What is wrong, Generosa?" he asked her, seeing as he looked up that her
handsome face was clouded. Her days were not often tranquil; her husband
was jealous, and she gave him cause for jealousy: the mill was a
favorite resort of all the young men for thirty miles around, and unless
Tasso Tassilo had ceased to grind corn he could not have shut his doors
to them.

"It is the old story, Don Gesualdo," she answered, leaning against the
church porch. "You know what Tasso, is and what a dog's life he leads
me." "You are not always prudent, my daughter," said Gesualdo, with a
faint smile.

"Who could be always prudent at my years?" said the miller's young wife.
"Tasso is a brute, and a fool too. One day he will drive me out of
myself: I tell him so."

"That is not the way to make him better," said Gesualdo. "I am sorry you
do not see it. The man loves you, and he feels he is old, and he knows
that you do not care: that is always like a thorn in his flesh: he feels
you do not care."

"How should he suppose that I care?" said Generosa, passionately. "I
hated him always; he is as old as my father; he expects me to be shut up
like a nun; if he had his own way I should never stir out of the house:
does one marry for that?"

"One should marry to do one's duty," said Gesualdo, timidly, for he felt
the feebleness of his counsels and arguments against the force and the
warmth and the self-will of a woman, conscious of her beauty and her
power and her lovers, and moved by all the instincts of vanity and
passion.

"We had a terrible scene an hour ago," said Generosa, passing over what
she did not choose to answer. "It cost me much not to put a knife into
him. It was about Falko. There was nothing new, but he thought there
was. I fear he will do Falko mischief one day: he threatened it: it is
not the first time."

"That is very grave," said Gesualdo, growing paler as he heard. "My
daughter, you are more in error than Tassilo. After all, he has his
rights. Why do you not send the young man away? He would obey you."

"He would obey me in anything else, not in that," said the woman, with
the little conscious smile of one who knows her own power. "He would not
go away. Indeed, why should he go away? He has his employment here. Why
should he go away because Tasso is a jealous fool?"

"Is he such a fool?" said Gesualdo, and he raised his eyes suddenly and
looked straight into hers. Generosa colored through her warm, pale