was not
a bad man, but he was a wilful man. The wild heart of youth in him was
wilful. Well, after San Felice, he would control that wilfulness of his
heart, he would discipline it. He would do more, he would forget that it
existed. After San Felice!

With a sigh, like that of a burdened man, he got up, took the letter in
his hand, and went out up the mountain-side. There he tore the letter and
its envelope into fragments, and hid the fragments in a heap of stones
hot with the sun.

When Gaspare came in that evening with a string of little birds in his
hand and asked Maurice if there were any letter from Africa to say when
the signora would arrive, Maurice answered "No."

"Then the signora will not be here for the fair, signorino?" said the
boy.

"I don't suppose--no, Gaspare, she will not be here for the fair."

"She would have written by now if she were coming.

"Yes, if she were coming she would certainly have written by now."

XVI

"Signorino! Signorino! Are you ready?"

It was Gaspare's voice shouting vivaciously from the sunny terrace, where
Tito and another donkey, gayly caparisoned and decorated with flowers and
little streamers of colored ribbon, were waiting before the steps.

"Si, si! I'm coming in a moment!" replied Maurice's voice from the
bedroom.

Lucrezia stood by the wall looking very dismal. She longed to go to the
fair, and that made her sad. But there was also another reason for her
depression. Sebastiano was still away, and for many days he had not
written to her. This was bad enough. But there was something worse. News
had come to Marechiaro from a sailor of Messina, a friend of
Sebastiano's, that Sebastiano was lingering in the Lipari Isles because
he had found a girl there, a pretty girl called Teodora Amalfi, to whom
he was paying attentions. And although Lucrezia laughed at the story, and
pretended to disbelieve it, her heart was rent by jealousy and despair,
and a longing to travel away, to cross the sea, to tear her lover from
temptation, to--to speak for a few moments quietly--oh, very
quietly--with this Teodora. Even now, while she stared at the donkeys,
and at Gaspare in his festa suit, with two large, pink roses above his
ears, she put up her hands instinctively to her own ears, as if to pluck
the ear-rings out of them, as the Sicilian women of the lower classes do,
deliberately, sternly, before they begin to fight their rivals, women who
have taken their lovers or their