Annunziata’s arm was round her, and she put up a timid hand to feel the Turkish kerchief, the plait of false hair outside, and lovingly touched the wrinkled cheek.
“It is so good to be back with you,” she whispered.
“My treasure! my dearest child! I have been with you since you were a baby, and the sun did not shine for me while you were away,” the old woman murmured, and her tearful eyes pierced the baffling glimmer of early moonlight like glittering stars.
The little white salon was cozy and inviting by lamplight, and beyond it, in the inner room, the table was laid for supper. Constantine, dead with fatigue, hunger and shaken bones, pounced on it like a famished ogre, but a little soup and wine sufficed Inarime and Pericles.
“Brother, you look thin and worn,” Helene exclaimed, eyeing him doubtfully.
“Has he not been ill?” screamed Constantine, between the noisy gulps of his soup.
“I am well enough, sister, but very weary,” said Pericles, rising from the table. “Inarime, I would speak a word with you before I sleep.”
She followed him to his room, and when he fell into a chair, she crouched on her knees beside him.
“My child, I have been humbled through you,” he began, musingly, while his fingers gently stroked her hair. “Your instinct against my reason! And instinct conquers, reason is beaten, and grievously rebuked. I meant it for the best, my Inarime. But now I yield to your wishes. It would have been well for me to have taken counsel with them from the first. But this is ground upon which, perhaps, the old may always learn from the young without disgrace.”
His speech faltered and died away in supreme weariness. Inarime held her breath. Could this mean the recall of Gustav? And yet the hope seemed so wild that she dared not give it a transient shelter lest the reaction should utterly overwhelm her.
“To-morrow, father dear,” she urged, kissing his hand. “You are so tired now.”
“I have not much to say, and I hasten to have it over that I may not be obliged to revive the painful subject. I will not seek again to oppose your natural desire to remain unwedded, since you cannot hope to wed where your heart is.”
Tears of disappointment sprang to her eyes. She moved away from him in silence, and then glancing over her shoulder, saw the droop of illness in his frame, and his arms hanging languidly beside him. She was smitten with remorse, and went back to him.