you should be here to-morrow at this hour?
Perhaps--I do not know. But to-morrow at this hour Gianluca will be
here, though he has not been able to leave the house for a week; and if
you come, all the impossibility is gone. It is as simple as that--"

"That is an appointment--with a man--"

Again the blood rushed to the young girl's face but this time it was
genuine shame of doing a thing which she had been taught to think the
most dreadful in the whole world.

"An appointment!" Taquisara laughed contemptuously. "Do you not come
often to see the Princess Corleone? You will come again. And Gianluca
will come often, too--and if you chance to meet to-morrow, it will be an
accident of fate, that is all, as you chanced to see me here to-day. You
cannot forbid him to come here. You cannot, without a reason, ask Donna
Bianca to refuse to receive him--"

"Oh!--if she ever guessed--" Veronica checked herself, still blushing,
but Taquisara was too sincerely in earnest to smile at the slip she had
made.

"That is all," he said. "There is neither appointment, nor engagement,
nor anything but the possibility of a meeting which you cannot be sure
of avoiding, unless you never come to see your friend, or unless you
give her some unjust reason for not letting him come, in case he calls.
There is nothing but chance. How can I tell whether you will come
to-morrow, or not? I shall perhaps never know, for I shall not come with
him. I have been here to-day--what excuse could I give for calling again
to-morrow? Donna Bianca would think it strange. I can hope, for his
sake. I can tell you that no woman has the right to throw away such love
as his, to ruin such a life as his, to break such a heart without a
thought and without so much as hearing the man speak--whatever this
wretched society in which we live may say about proprieties and rights
and wrongs, and the difference between the proper behaviour for young
girls and married women. This is God's earth, Donna Veronica--not
society's!"

Veronica said nothing; but there was perplexity in her face, and she
looked down, and pulled at one finger of her glove. She was wondering
whether, if she came on the next day, and stood with Gianluca della
Spina on that very spot, he would speak for himself as strongly and well
as his friend had been speaking for him.

Somehow, she doubted it, and somehow, too, she knew that if by magic
Taquisara should all at once turn out to be the real Gianluca,