"If she cares for you she'll be pleased by your good action," she said consolingly. "No, no, she won't give you up because you can't disown your mother. Ah! true love cares nothing for the prejudices of the world. I loved my husband madly when all the world was against him." "We shall see," said Anania. "I'll write to you." "For pity's sake, jewel of gold, don't write! I can't read, and I don't want to make your affairs public property." "Well then----" "Send me a token. If she sticks to you, send the _rezetta_ wrapped in a white handkerchief. If you lose her, send it in a coloured handkerchief." He promised. "And when will you come back yourself?" "I don't know. Soon, certainly. As soon as I have settled my affairs." He left without seeing Olì again, for the poor thing had at last dropped asleep. He was in deep dejection. The journey seemed eternal, though he had no wish to arrive at his destination. Still, he was drawn by a slender thread of hope. "Margherita loves me," he thought; "perhaps she loves me as Nonna loved her husband. Her family will scorn and drive me away, but she will say, 'I'll wait for you. I will love you always.' That's what she will say; but what shall I be able to promise her? My career is destroyed." Another hope, not to be confessed, was, however, fermenting in the bottom of his heart: that Olì would make her escape. He dared not reveal this hope clearly to himself, but he felt it, felt it; in spite of himself it ran in his blood like a drop of poison. He was ashamed of it; he understood its meanness, but it was impossible to drive it away. At the moment when he had cried, "I will kill you, I will kill myself," he had meant what he said, but now the words, the whole scene felt like some horrible nightmare. As he saw again the landscape, the street, which three days ago, he had seen with so much gladness in his soul, as he approached Nuoro, the sense of present reality pressed upon him more and more tightly. The moment he arrived at home he looked for the amulet; and possessed by the superstition that things prearranged do not come to pass, he wrapped it up in a coloured handkerchief. Then he remembered that the sad occurrences of these few days he had always foreseen and expected, and he was vexed by his own childishness. "And why should I send the _rezetta_ at all? Why should I want to please her?" He tossed the little packet against the wall, then picked it up again, softening. "For Aunt Grathia," he thought. Then he told himself, "At four o'clock I will go to Signor Carboni and tell him the whole thing. I must get it over this very day. Margherita! Margherita! Suppose I see her to-night instead? She will bid me say nothing to her father. She will tell me to wait--to go on as usual. No, I won't be such a coward. At four o'clock I will go to Signor Carboni."