Two days later Maria received a letter from Castiglione saying that his return was now a matter of certainty, but that there were formalities to be fulfilled which would take some little time. Most fortunately there was a step in the regiment. The crabbed old major of the Piedmont Lancers was promoted to be lieutenant-colonel of another regiment, the senior captain was gazetted major, and Castiglione himself would come back as the junior captain, probably during the next month.

Maria’s heart beat fast, and she smiled as she thought of Giuliana’s expressed determination to ‘save her in spite of herself.’ It was morning, and she went out alone for a walk. It was good to live to-day, and to move swiftly through the bright spring air was to be twice alive. She went by the cross streets to the Via del Veneto and through the Porta Pinciana to the Villa Borghese. She skirted the racecourse below the Dairy, and stood still a moment to watch the riders go by. Not far from her she saw Angelica Campodonico and her young brother Mario riding on each side of their teacher. The slim young girl sat straight and square and was enjoying herself, but the boy grabbed the pommel of his saddle whenever the riding-master looked away, and seemed to stick on by his heels. He was the boy whom Leone had ‘hammered,’ as he expressed it, and Maria smiled as she thought of her own little son’s sturdy back and small, hard fists.

Presently a young lieutenant of the Piedmont Lancers cantered up on a beautiful English mare. He rode very well, as many Italian officers now do, and he was evidently aware of it. The familiar uniform fascinated Maria, and her eyes lingered on it as the young man rode past her. He saw that she was a woman of the world, and that she was still young and pretty; and in spite of the deep black she wore, it at once occurred to him that this was the best place in the wide ring for jumping his mare in and out of the meadow over the rather stiff fence. Still Maria watched him, and he might not have been so pleased with himself if he could have guessed that she was thinking of another officer who was an even better rider than he, but who would certainly not have cared to show off before a pretty lady whom he did not know. And Maria knew that before long Baldassare del Castiglione would sometimes come and exercise his horses in the same place, and that she would very probably happen to be walking that way and would see him. And he would stop and salute her, and draw up by the outer fence and shake hands with her and exchange a few words; and his eyes would be as blue as sapphires, and she would be the proudest woman in the world, almost without knowing it. So she unconsciously smiled at the young lieutenant and turned away.

She walked on, and before long she was sitting under the ilex-trees above the Piazza di Siena. There was a new bench there; or perhaps it had only been painted. There was water in the fountain, leaping up and sparkling under the deep green trees. The basin had been dry on that winter’s afternoon long ago, and the evergreen oaks had looked much darker. That had been like death; this was life itself. The past did not exist; it had never existed at all, because it had all been a horrible mistake, an untruth, and a loathsome sin; a sin confessed now, an untruth forgiven, a mistake explained and condoned. In the future all was love; and yet all was right and truthful and straightforward, as justice itself. Giuliana’s warning was but the well-meant preaching of a good friend who could never understand; the grim old monk’s words were far away. Where was the deadly risk, or the mortal sin? God was strong and good, and would make all good deeds seem easy; and she and the man she loved would rise far beyond this dying body, by that good, to be united for ever in light and peace. Baldassare would believe, as she did, and in the end they would find heaven together.

She leaned back, and her eyes looked upwards as she sat there alone, and in all her being there was not the least thought that was not innocent and pure and beautiful. She communed with herself as with an angel, and with the image of the man she loved as with a saint. She felt as she felt sometimes when she knelt at early morning before the altar rail of the little oratory near her house, and the young priest with his martyr’s face came softly down and ministered to her.

She almost trembled when she rose at last to leave the place where she had been lifted up from the world, the place where she had once spoken such bitter and cruel words to him who was now once more the heart of her heart and the soul of her soul. She walked homewards in a deep, sweet dream of refreshment.

The footman opened the door, and as she entered the small bright hall she saw a big letter with a black border and Spanish stamps lying upon some others, and she knew Montalto’s large, stiff handwriting. Her heart sank, though she had expected the letter for two days.

She took it with no outward show of emotion, for she felt that the servant was watching and that he guessed whence it came. In a steady voice she asked if Leone had come in from his walk with old Agostino, and the footman told her they were still out. Her Excellency would remember that the Signorino was gone to the gardens of the Palazzo Trasmondo to play with his little friends.

Maria went to her sitting-room without calling her maid, and sat down to read her husband’s letter with closed doors. She felt strong and brave, and resolved to think of the absent man with all the respect Giuliana Parenzo could have exacted from her.

It was a very long letter, filling several big black-edged sheets; but the handwriting was large and stiff, and easy to read, and at first her eyes followed the words quickly and unhesitatingly.

Montalto was deeply affected by his mother’s death; that was evident in the short, strained sentences that were painfully formal save for a heart-broken word here and there. Conscientiously he told his wife the short story of the illness during the last days, the last hours, at the last minute, at the end. She read with a sort of reverence, but she wondered why he gave her every detail. Had he come to her for sympathy, after all the stern and unforgiving years that had passed?

Then she took the next sheet, and the truth broke upon her. So far, he had given her an account of what had happened, of how his mother had suddenly begun to sink and had died peacefully after receiving all the Sacraments. But he had not told what her last words had been.

‘My dear son,’ she had said just before she had closed her eyes for ever, ‘I have been very unforgiving towards your wife. Perhaps I have helped to make you so. Promise me that you will go to her and ask her pardon for me. And be reconciled with her, if God wills that it be possible.’

She had said all these words with great distinctness, for she had been calm and fully conscious, and able to speak until the last moment of her life; and then her heart had stopped beating and death had come quietly.

Maria held the sheet before her with both her hands, trying to go on, and determined to read bravely to the end, but it was a long time before she got to the next words, and she felt as if she had been unexpectedly condemned to die.

The man she had injured meant to fulfil his mother’s last request to the letter. For he asked his erring wife’s pardon for the dead woman who had not been able to forgive her till the end. He asked her to write out the message to the dead and send it to him.

That would be the easiest part. How could Maria find it hard to say that she forgave what she had deserved? But the rest was different.

He went on to say that it was not only for his mother’s sake that he wished to be reconciled: it was for his own. In spite of all, he loved Maria dearly. He had known how she had lived, how her whole life since he had finally left her had been an atonement for one fault; and that one fault he now freely forgave her. He would never speak of it again, he said, for he was sure that she had suffered more from it than he himself.

She guessed, as she read, what it must have cost him to say that much. He earnestly desired a reconciliation. He wished to come back to Rome to live in his own house, with his wife, before all the world. With a pathetic inability to put his feelings into words, he said that he would try to make her happy ‘by all means acceptable to her.’ Yet he did not wish to force this reconciliation upon her, for he was well aware that in leaving her he had conferred on her a measure of independence and had given her good reason to suppose that he would never come back. Unless she willingly agreed to what he now offered, he would never come back to Rome; for it had been one thing to stay with his invalid mother, leaving his wife to live where she pleased, but it would be quite another in the eyes of the world if he returned to his own house and his wife continued to stay in a hired house. Hitherto there had been no scandal which his authority could not now put down, no open break which might not still be repaired with dignity. Then, on a sudden, the writing became less stiff and clear, and the lonely man’s full heart overflowed. He loved her so dearly—he did not repeat ‘in spite of all’—why might he not hope to make her happy at last? In the past he had not known how to show her how tenderly, how devotedly, he had loved her; he had been but a dull companion for her; she had been made to marry him almost against her will. Without again speaking of her fault he was finding excuses for what he had forgiven. And the burden came back again and again, he loved her with all his heart. It was no mere empty show of reconciliation that he offered her, for the sake of his name, for what the world might say or think. He wished, he asked to be allowed, to take her back altogether, wholly, as if there had been no division.

Maria held the sheet tight between her upraised hands, but a painful tremor ran through her to the tips of her fingers, and the paper shook before her eyes.

She had reached the end now. He had poured out his soul as he had never done before then to any living being; but quite at the last line his natural formality returned, he ‘begged the favour of a speedy reply at her convenience,’ and he signed his name in full—‘Diego Silani di Montalto.’

After a long time Maria rose from her seat, and her face was almost grey. She went to her writing-table and opened a small desk with a simple little gold key she wore on her watch chain. The receptacle was already half full of Castiglione’s letters, and she laid her husband’s on top of the heap, shut down the lid, and turned the key again.

Just then Leone burst into the room, lusty and radiant. He stopped short when he saw his mother’s face.

‘You have been to see the bad priest again!’ he cried angrily.

‘No, dear, I shall not go to see him again. I have had a great—a great surprise. Papa is coming back soon.’