Chapter II

At Torre del Greco, in his dining-hall with its lofty windows, the Baron di Pavichino sat at breakfast. His bushy eyebrows contracted darkly when the long-expected visit of his nephew Luigi was announced to him.

Luigi di Pavichino, the passionate lover of the fair Concetta, now entered the room, pale and weary-eyed. For four days he had not been seen in the Palazzo di Pavichino, although not long before he had become engaged to his rich cousin. The fear of exposing himself to her displeasure now brought him here, after changing his clothes for a little more formal attire than that in which he had appeared at the peasants' festival, to explain his absence by a plausible story.

"_Per Bacco!_ Lucetta was looking for you in vain yesterday and the day before!" began the old Baron sternly, plucking at his gray beard in a way that betokened displeasure. "If you are beginning already to provide such disappointments for your future wife, my dear Luigi, then it would possibly be more sensible to call the engagement off while there is yet time."

Luigi trembled at these words of his wealthy uncle. In fact, this marriage was his only plank of salvation, to which he clung with desperate grasp like a man fighting for life in the waves--to which he must cling in order to bring any order into his ruined financial position, which he carefully concealed from his suspecting uncle, and which had to be retrieved as soon as possible.

The fact that the estate inherited from his father, including farms and factories, was mortgaged up to the last cent, would have been sufficient to jeopardize his relations to his unattractive but richly-dowered cousin. He knew the verdict. A long-drawn sigh was the only answer he gave to himself, and besides, there was his incapability of meeting his notes indorsed by friends, falling due within a short time for considerable amounts contracted at the gaming table. Sums which had to be paid because they were debts of honor, for which he pledged his "parole d'honneur."

"Forgive me, dear uncle," he began stumblingly, with these reflections in mind.

"I went to see the Padre at the Monastery to tell him of my engagement and there--the kind monk--the harvest--the new wine--"

The weatherbeaten features of the old nobleman took on a more cheerful expression at these words.

"Per bacco!" he began, smacking his lips and winking slyly, "it must have been the new Lacrima Christi wine I sent him last week, which has made all the mischief. Ho! ho! if that's the case, my dear boy, you will soon taste the wine that will be worth the tasting," he added with a broad grin, smacking his lips again in a manner attributable to the thorough knowledge of an old wine gourmand.

"Yes, my boy, the same Lacrima Christi will be served at your wedding next month."

The atmosphere was sultry, but he shivered; and if a mirror could have been held before his eyes he would have startled back alarmed from the gray stony face so unlike his.

"Next month?" he stammered.

Until now he tried to forget the whole affair; her image was so utterly driven from his fickle heart as if it were buried twenty feet under the ruins of Herculaneum.

"Yes, my dear Luigi, I shall write at once to Torre Annunziata, and then we will celebrate a merry wedding and invite all--Why, what's the matter?" he asked greatly bewildered. "What a wry face you are making?"

"It is the pleasure--the unlooked-for surprise,--" stammered Luigi with difficulty, while his pale face grew a shade paler. The sweet face of Concetta, with the bewitching dimples from which little mocking Cupids seemed to peep out, challenging him like a siren to a kiss; her silvery laughter, her deep blue eyes like a fairy's--all that came up before his interior vision with intoxicating strength, while the thought that in four weeks he would be called upon to plight his troth to his unlovely cousin made him shudder.

Still he was careful not to drop the veil that hid his real thoughts so carefully in the presence of his suspicious uncle.

"Pleasure? Ho! ho! my dear Luigi, I thought as much. Young men, young men! I have not forgotten my own youth yet--a little wild it was." He chuckled half to himself, in a low voice.

"Can I--see my _fiancee_ now?" Luigi asked, in a half stifled voice.

"Now? So early? No, dear boy, she is still among her pillows--dreaming of you! _Per Dio!_ today, though, is the great festival of Saint Cecelia. Our good neighbors from Torre del Greco, Portici, and Torre Annunziata will be sure to gather at Castellamare. We must go too. You shall go with Lucetta in my victoria with the four fiery Arabs, and I will follow the happy pair in a plainer carriage," continued the old baron with nods of pleasure.

It was at the same festival, at the chapel of Saint Cecelia, that he hoped this very evening to meet Concetta. The room seemed to spin round him and grow dark. "By your leave, my dear uncle, I must go at once to the club. You know, the joyful news--"

"Of your engagement?"

"Haven't you mentioned it yet to your friends," he cried, a picture of wild-eyed amazement.

"To be sure I have, but--the early date of the wedding--" he hastened to reply in a dull voice, wiping the cold perspiration from his brow.

Catching up his hat and cane, he took a hasty leave from his Uncle, with the promise to come back punctually at four o'clock. He rushed away tortured by this dreaded thought in mind; but he had to see the small army of creditors and keep them at bay with their insolent demands for money, which were becoming intolerable until after the most dreaded wedding.