Tebaldo's own affairs were by no means simple. He had made up his mind to get Miss Lizzie Slayback for his wife, and her fortune for himself; but he could not make up his mind to forget the beautiful Aliandra Basili. The consequence was that he was in constant fear lest either should hear of his devotion to the other, seeing that his brother Francesco was quite as much in love with the singer as he was himself, and but for native cowardice, as ready for any act of treachery which could secure his own ends. By that weakness Tebaldo held him, for the present, in actual bodily fear, which is more often an element even in modern life than is generally supposed. But how long that might be possible Tebaldo could not foresee. At any moment, by a turn of events, Francesco might get out of his power.

Aliandra's season in Rome had been a great success, and her career seemed secured, though she had not succeeded in obtaining an immediate engagement for the London season, which had been the height of her ambition. She had made her appearance too late for that, but the possibility of such a piece of good fortune was quite within her reach for the ensuing year. Being in reality a sensible and conscientious artist, therefore, and having at the same time always before her the rather vague hope of marrying one of the brothers, she had made up her mind to stay in Rome until July to study certain new parts with an excellent master she had found there. She therefore remained where she was, after giving a few performances in the short season after Lent, and she continued to live very quietly with her old aunt in the little apartment they had hired. A certain number of singers and other musicians, with whom she had been brought into more or less close acquaintance in her profession, came to see her constantly, but she absolutely refused to know any of the young men of society who had admired her and sent her flowers during the opera season. With all her beauty and youth and talent, she possessed a very fair share of her father's profound common sense.

Of the two, she very much preferred Francesco, who was gentler, gayer, and altogether a more pleasant companion; but she clearly saw the advantage of marrying the elder brother, who had a very genuine old title, for which she could provide a fortune by her voice. There were two or three instances of such marriages which had turned out admirably, though several others had been failures. She saw no reason why she should not succeed as well as anyone.

Tebaldo, on his part, had never had the smallest intention of marrying her, though he had hinted to her more than once, in moments of passion, that he might do so. Aliandra was as obstinate as he, and, as has been said, possessed the tenacious instinct of self-preservation and the keen appreciation of danger which especially characterise the young girl of the south. She was by no means a piece of perfection in all ways, and was quite capable of setting aside most scruples in the accomplishment of her end. But that desired end was marriage, and there was no probability at all that she should ever lose her head and commit an irrevocable mistake for either of the brothers.

She saw clearly that Tebaldo was in love with her, as he understood love. She could see how his eyes lighted up and how the warm blood mantled under his sallow brown skin when he was with her, and how his hand moved nervously when it held hers. She could not have mistaken those signs, even if her aunt, the excellent Signora Barbuzzi, had not taken a lively interest in the prospects of her niece's marriage, watching Tebaldo's face as an old sailor ashore watches the signs of the weather and names the strength of the wind, from a studding-sail breeze to a gale.

What most disturbed Aliandra's hopes was that Tebaldo was cautious even in his passion, and seemed as well able to keep his head as she herself. His brother often told her that Tebaldo sometimes, though rarely, altogether lost control of himself for a moment, and became like a dangerous wild animal. But she did not believe the younger man, who was always doing his best to influence her against Tebaldo, and whom she rightly guessed to be a far more dangerous person where a woman was concerned.

Francesco had once frightened her, and she was really afraid to be alone with him. There was sometimes an expression which she dreaded in his satyr-like eyes and a smile on his red lips that chilled her. Once, and she could never forget it, he had managed to find her alone in her room at the theatre, and without warning he had seized her rudely and kissed her so cruelly while she struggled in his arms that her lips had been swollen and had hurt her all the next day. Her maid had opened the door suddenly, and he had disappeared at once without another word. She had never told Tebaldo of that.

Since then she had been very careful. Yet in reality she liked him better, for he could be very gentle and sympathetic, and he understood her moods and wishes as Tebaldo never did, for he was a woman's man, while Tebaldo was eminently what is called a man's man.

Aliandra was, as yet, in ignorance of Miss Slayback's existence, but she saw well enough that Tebaldo was concealing something from her. A woman's faculty for finding out that a man has a secret of some sort is generally far beyond her capacity for discovering what that secret is. He appeared to have engagements at unusual times, and there was a slight shade of preoccupation in his face when she least expected it. On the other hand, he seemed even more anxious to please her than formerly, when he was with her, and she even fancied that his manner expressed a sort of relief when he knew that he could spend an hour in her company uninterrupted.

When she questioned him, he said that he was in some anxiety about his affairs, and his engagements, according to his own account, were with men of business. But he never told what he was really doing. He had not even thought it necessary to inform her of the sale of Camaldoli. Though she was a native of the country, he told her precisely what he told everyone in regard to Ferdinando Pagliuca's death.

'Eh—you say so,' she answered. 'But as for me, I do not believe you. There never was but one Ferdinando Pagliuca, he was your brother, and he was a friend of all the brigands in Sicily. You may tell these Romans about the Pagliuca di Bauso, but I know better. Do you take me for a Roman? We of Randazzo know what a brigand is!'

'You should, at all events,' answered Tebaldo, laughing, 'for you are all related. It is one family. If you knew how many brigands have been called Basili, like you!'

'Then you and I are also related!' she laughed, too, though she watched his face. 'But as for your brother, may the Lord have him in peace! He is dead, and Saracinesca killed him.'

Tebaldo shrugged his shoulders, but showed no annoyance.

'As much as you please,' he answered. 'But my brother Ferdinando is alive and well in Palermo.'

'So much the better, my dear friend. You need not wear mourning for him, as so many people are doing at Santa Vittoria.'

'What do you mean?' asked Tebaldo, uneasily.

'Did you ever hear of Concetta, the beautiful daughter of Don Atanasio, the apothecary?' asked Aliandra, quietly smiling.

Tebaldo affected surprise and ignorance.

'It is strange,' continued the singer, 'for you admire beauty, and she is called everywhere the Fata del' Etna—the Fairy of Etna—and she is one of the most beautiful girls in the whole world. My father knows her father a little—of course, he is only an apothecary—' she shrugged her shoulders apologetically—'but in the country one knows everybody. So I have seen her sometimes, as at the fair of Randazzo, when she and her father have had a biscuit and a glass of wine at our house. But we could not ask them to dinner, because the mayor and his wife were coming, and the lieutenant of carabineers—an apothecary! You understand?'

'I understand nothing beyond what you say,' said Tebaldo. 'You did not consider the apothecary of Santa Vittoria good enough to be asked to meet the mayor of Randazzo. How does that affect me?'

'Oh, not at all!' laughed Aliandra. 'But everything is known, sooner or later. Ferdinando, your brother, was at the fair, too—I remember what a beautiful black horse he had, as he rode by our house. But he did not come in, for he did not know us. Now, when Don Atanasio and Concetta went out, he was waiting a little way down the street, standing and holding his horse's bridle. I saw, for I looked through the chinks of the blinds to see which way Concetta and her father would go. And your brother bowed to the ground when they came near him. Fancy! To an apothecary's daughter! Just as I have seen you bow to the Princess of Sant' Ilario in the Villa Borghese. She is Saracinesca's mother, is she not? Very well. I tell you the truth when I tell you that Don Ferdinando took the two to dine with him in the best room at the inn. They say he thought nothing good enough for the apothecary's daughter, though he was of the blood of princes! But now Concetta wears mourning. Perhaps it is not for him? Eh?'

Aliandra had learned Italian very well when a child, and was even taking lessons in French, in order to be able to sing in Paris. But as she talked with Tebaldo she fell back into her natural dialect, which was as familiar to him as to herself. He loved the sound of it, though he took the greatest pains to overcome his own Sicilian accent in order not to seem provincial in Rome. But it was pleasant to hear it now and then in the midst of a life of which the restraints were all disagreeable to him, while many of them were almost intolerably irksome.

'How much better our language is than this stilted Roman!' he exclaimed, by way of suddenly turning the conversation. 'I often wish you could sing your operas in Sicilian.'

'I often sing you Sicilian songs,' she answered. 'But it is strange that Concetta should wear mourning, is it not?'

'Leave Concetta alone, and talk to me about yourself. I have never seen her—'

'Do not say such things!' laughed Aliandra. 'I do not believe much that you say, but you will soon not let me believe anything at all. Everyone has seen Concetta. They sing songs about her even in Palermo—La Fata del' Etna—'

'Oh, I have heard of her, of course, by that name, but I never remember seeing her. At all events, you are ten times more beautiful than she—'

'I wish I were!' exclaimed the artist, simply. 'But if you think so, that is much.'

'It would be just the same if you were ugly,' said Tebaldo, magnanimously. 'I should love you just as I do—to distraction.'

'To distraction?' she laughed again.

'You know it,' he answered, with an air of conviction. 'I love you, and everything that belongs to you—your lovely face, your angelic voice, your words, your silence—too much.'

'Why too much?'

'Because I suffer.'

'There is a remedy for that, my dear Tebaldo.'

'Tell me!'

'Marry me. It is simple enough! Why should you suffer?'

Her laughter was musical and sunny, but there was a little irony in its readiness to follow the words.

'You know that we have often spoken of that,' he answered, being taken unawares. 'There are difficulties.'

'So you always say. But then it would be wiser of you not to love me any more, but to marry where you do not find those difficulties. Surely it should be easy!'

She spoke now with a little scorn, while watching him; and as she saw the vulture-like droop of his eyelids she knew that she had touched him, though she could not quite tell how. She had never spoken so frankly to him before.

'Not so easy as you think,' he replied, with a rather artificial laugh.

'Then you have tried?' she asked. 'I had thought so! And you have failed? My condolences!'

'I? Tried to marry?' he cried, realising how far she was leading him. 'What are you making me say?'

'I am trying to make you tell the truth,' she answered, with a change of tone. 'But it is not easy, for you are clever at deceiving me, and I wonder that you cannot deceive the woman you wish to marry.'

'I do not wish to marry anyone,' he protested.

'No—not even me. Me, least of all, because I am not good enough to marry you, though you are good enough to pursue me with what you call your love. I am only an artist, and you must have a princess, of course. I have only my voice, and you want a solid fortune. I have only my honour, but you want honours through your wife for yourself, and you would tear mine to rags if I yielded a hair's-breadth. You make a mistake, Don Tebaldo Pagliuca. I am a Sicilian girl and I came of honest people. You may suffer as much as you please, but unless you will marry me, you may go on suffering, for you shall not ruin me.'

She spoke strongly, with a strange mixture of theatrical and commonplace expressions; but she was in earnest, and he knew it, and in her momentary anger she was particularly fascinating to him. Yet her speech made no real impression upon his mind. He tried to take her hand, but she drew it away sharply.

'No,' she said. 'I have had enough of this love-making, this hand-taking, and this faith-breaking. You sometimes speak of marrying me, and then you bring up those terrible, unknown difficulties, which you never define. Yes, you are a prince—but there are hundreds of them in our Italy. Yes, I am only an artist, but some people say that I am a great artist—and there are very few in Italy, or anywhere else. If it is beneath your dignity to marry a singer, Signor Principe di Corleone, then go and take a wife of your own class. If you love me, Tebaldo Pagliuca, as an honest man loves an honest woman—and God knows I am that—then marry me, and I, with my voice, will make you a fortune and buy back your estates, besides being a faithful wife to you. But if you will not do that, go. You shall not harm my good name by being perpetually about me, and you shall not touch the tips of my fingers with your lips until you are my lawful husband. There, I have spoken. You shall know that a Sicilian girl is as good as a Roman lady—better, perhaps.'

Tebaldo looked at her in some surprise, and his mind worked rapidly, remembering all she had said during the preceding quarter of an hour. She spoke with a good deal of natural dignity and force, and he was ready to admit that she was altogether in earnest. But his quick senses missed a certain note which should have been in her tones if this had been a perfectly spontaneous outburst. It was clear, as it always had been, that she wished to marry him. It was not at all clear that she loved him in the least. It struck him instantly that she must have heard something of his attention to the foreign heiress, and that she had planned this scene in order to bring matters to a crisis. He was too sensible not to understand that he himself was absurdly in love with her, in his own way, and that she knew it, as women generally do, and could exasperate him, perhaps, into some folly of which he might repent, by simply treating him coldly, as she threatened.

During the silence which followed, she sat with folded arms and half-closed eyes, looking at him defiantly from under her lids.

'You do me a great injustice,' he said.

'I am sorry,' she answered. 'I have no choice. I value my good name as a woman, besides my reputation as an artist. You do not justify yourself in the only way in your power by explaining clearly what the insuperable difficulties are in the way of our marriage.'

The notary's daughter did not lack logic.

'I never said that they were insuperable—'

'Then overcome them, if you want me,' answered Aliandra implacably.

'I said that there were difficulties, and there are great ones. You speak of making a fortune by your voice, my dear Aliandra,' he continued, his tones sweetening. 'But you must understand that a man who is a gentleman does not like to be dependent on his wife's profession for his support.'

'I do not see that it is more dignified to depend on his wife's money because she had not earned it by hard work,' retorted the singer scornfully. 'It is honestly earned.'

'The honour is entirely yours,' said Tebaldo. 'The world would grant me no share in it. Then there are my mother's objections, which are strong ones,' he went on quickly. 'She has, of course, a right to be consulted, and she does not even know you.'

'It is in your power to introduce me to your mother whenever you please.'

'She is too ill to see anyone—'

'She has not always been ill. You have either been afraid to bring an artist to your mother's house, which is not flattering to me, or else you never had the slightest intention of marrying me, in spite of much that you have said. Though I have heard you call your brother Francesco a coward, I think he is braver than you, for he would marry me to-morrow, if I would have him.'

'And live on what you earn,' retorted Tebaldo, with ready scorn.

'He has as much as you have,' observed Aliandra. 'Your uncle left no will, and you all shared the property equally—'

'You are not a notary's daughter for nothing,' laughed Tebaldo. 'That is true. But there was very little to share. Do you know what was left when the debts were paid? A bit of land here in Rome—that was all, besides Camaldoli. Both have been sold advantageously, and we have just enough to live decently all together. We should be paupers if we tried to separate.'

'You are nothing if not plausible. But you will forgive me if I say that this difficulty has the air of being really insuperable. You absolutely refuse to share what I earn, and you are absolutely incapable of earning anything yourself. That being the case, the sooner you go away the better, for you can never marry me, on your own showing, and you are injuring my reputation in the meantime.'

'I am engaged in speculations, in which I hope to make money,' said Tebaldo. 'I often tell you that I have appointments with men of business—'

'Yes, you often tell me so,' interrupted Aliandra, incredulously.

'You are cold, and you are calculating,' retorted Tebaldo, with a sudden change of manner, as though taking offence at last.

'It is fortunate for me that I am not hot-headed and foolish,' replied Aliandra, coolly.

They parted on these terms. She believed that her coldness would bring him to her feet if anything could; but he was persuaded that his brother had betrayed him and had told her about the American heiress.