So they
parted good friends, without further words.
But when Veronica was alone, she began to realize that Don Teodoro was
not so altogether in the wrong as she believed herself to be in the
right. People might certainly be found whom she could not class with the
world she so frankly despised, and who would say that if Gianluca
recovered she should marry him, after extending such an invitation to
him and his people, and that, if she did not, she would deserve to be
called a heartless flirt--from their point of view. Gianluca's father
and mother might say so.
He himself, at least, must know her better than that, she thought. And
then, there was the terrible earnestness of Taquisara's letter, the
sober statement of his best friend, next to herself, and a statement
which it must have cost the man something to make, since it was
necessarily accompanied by an apology. After all, though he had
insulted her, she liked Taquisara for the whole-hearted way in which he
took Gianluca's part in everything. There was that statement, and she
felt that it was a true one. Gianluca was more to her than any one she
knew, in a way which no one could understand, and she had a right to see
him before he died. If, by any happy chance, he should live, people
might perhaps talk. She should not care, for she should have done right.
That was the way in which she accounted to herself for her action; but
the consciousness that Don Teodoro was not quite wrong was there.
Pages:
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387