There was Bianca Corleone's
look of blank surprise when Veronica had first spoken of a possible
marriage with Bosio, and there was Taquisara's bold assertion, tallying
with the priest's, that the Macomer wanted her fortune, and there was
very vividly before her the gnawing anxiety she had seen in Matilde's
face until the latter had caught sight of the artificial flower on that
memorable evening. And the string on which the beads of memory were
threaded was her long-repressed but profound distrust of Gregorio
Macomer. It had seemed a wicked prejudice, a gratuitously false
judgment, based upon something in his face, and she had always fought
against it as unworthy, besides being irrational. Then, too, there was
the will she had signed a fortnight since, for the sake of peace. If
there was nothing in what the priest had said, why had they been so
terribly anxious to get the document executed without delay? It was
scarcely natural. And there were fifty other details, turns of phrases,
changes of expression, little words of Gregorio's spoken in an enigmatic
tone to his wife, which Veronica had not understood, but which she had
therefore remembered, and which could mean that he was on the verge of
ruin, and in great trouble of mind about his affairs. Amidst the wildly
shifting scenery of dreams, the little doll figures of abiding facts out
of memory joined hands in procession, showing their faces one by one and
their likeness to one another more and more clearly.
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