"It was all signed and witnessed just a year before he died. It's all horribly correct. Fixed up as firmly as yards of red tape can tie it. And if I marry I lose every centesimo and my beloved Casa di Corleone, and if I don't marry I shall never see the inside of that letter. Did you ever know such a trying situation for a luxury-loving and curious woman in your life?"
"I fancy," said Christopher, "that the curiosity does not trouble you greatly."
"It does not," she confessed. "But the will! You must allow that is annoying. It puts my mind and my affections in a kind of mental strait-jacket. Every time I see a charming man----"
"No, mercifully not you," said Sara. "We are one of the few exceptions that prove the generally accepted rule of the non-existence of platonic friendship between men and women. You are the most delightful combination of friend and father-confessor that ever existed, without--Heaven be praised--a trace of the lover. Where was I before you interrupted?"
"Looking at a charming man," said Christopher.
"Oh, yes. Whenever I see a charming man I have to tell myself to be careful, to run no risk of my heart getting in the smallest degree involved. I call up mental pictures of coffers upon coffers--thousands of them--crammed with centesimi. I shut my eyes and see the courtyard, the oranges, and the marble fauns, then I open them and look at the charming man and feel more secure. But I daren't run the tiniest risk for fear of the consequences. I can't--" she almost wailed the words, "I can't even flirt."
"As your father-confessor," said Christopher, "I am glad to hear it."
"But think," she protested, "what I lose."
"I think," said Christopher, "what the man would lose, and have a fellow-feeling for him."
"On the contrary, I am very sympathetic--towards the man, who, but for the late Duca's will, might be wriggling, as I said before, in your silken toils."
"Christopher," said Sara, suddenly and quite seriously, "do you think I shall ever marry again?"
"I most certainly hope you will," replied Christopher.
"And lose Casa di Corleone and the coffers of centesimi!" she exclaimed. Then again she was back to the serious mood. "Why do you hope so, Christopher?"
For a moment Christopher was silent. Then he spoke.