The work of the mill went on the same, being directed by the brother of Tassilo, who had always had a share in it, both of labor and profit. The murder still served for food for people's tongues through vintage and onward until the maize-harvest and the olive-gathering. As the nights grew long and the days cold, it ceased to be the supreme theme of interest in Marca: no one ever dreamed that there could be a doubt of the absent woman's guilt, or said a good word for her; and no one gave her any pity for wasting her youth and fretting her soul out in a prison-cell, though they were disposed to grant that what she had done had been, after all, perhaps only natural, considering all things. Her own family were too poor to travel to her help,--indeed, only heard of her misfortunes after many days, and then only by chance, through a travelling hawker: they could do nothing for her, and did not try; she had never sent them as much of her husband's money as they had expected her to do, and now that she was in trouble she might get out of it as she could, so they said. She had always cared for her ear-rings and breastpins, never for them: she would see if her jewels would help her now. When any member of a poor family marries into riches, the desire to profit by her marriage is, if ungratified, quickly turned into hatred of herself. Why should she have gone to eat stewed kid and fried lamb and hare baked with fennel, when they had only a bit of salt fish and an onion now and then? They had admitted the vicar of San Bartolo, once or twice, to visit her, the jailer standing by, but he had been unable to do more than to weep with her and assure her of his own perfect belief in her innocence. The change he found in her shocked him so greatly that he could scarcely speak; and he thought to himself, as he saw how aged and wasted and altered she was, if she lose her beauty and grow old before her time, what avail will it be to her even if they declare her innocent? Her gay lover will look at her no more. Falko Melegari loved her wildly, ardently, vehemently indeed; but Gesualdo, with that acute penetration which sometimes supplies in delicate natures that knowledge of the world which they lack, felt that it was not a love which had any qualities in it to withstand the trials of time or the loss of physical charms. Perchance Generosa herself felt as much; and the cruel consciousness of it hurt her more than her prison-bars. CHAPTER III.