San Salvador

The family in Palazzo Loredan, in the Grand Canal, Venice, had finished their midday breakfast, and coffee was brought in.

There was the Marchesa Loredan, a widow, her widowed only daughter with a little son and his tutor, and Don Claudio Loredan, the Marchesa’s second son. Her eldest son was married; and the youngest, Don Enrico, was a monsignore, and coadjutor of an old canon whom he was impatiently waiting to succeed.

The breakfast had not been a cheerful one. Don Claudio, usually the life of the family and its harmonizing element, had been silent and preoccupied; and Madama Loredan’s black brows had two deep lines between them,—sure signs of a storm.

She rose as the coffee was bought in.

“Carry a tête-à-tête down to the arbor,” she said to the servant; and to her son, “I wish to speak to you, Claudio.”

The tutor rose respectfully, making sly but intense signals to his pupil to do the same. But the boy, occupied in counting the cloves of a mandarin orange, did not choose to see them.

A long window of the dining-room opened on a balcony, and from the balcony a stair descended to the garden. This garden, a square the width of the house, would soon be a mass of bloom; but spring had hardly come as yet. The little arbor in the centre was covered with rosebuds, and the orange-trees were in blossom. There was a table in the arbor, with a chair at each side.

Madama literally swept across the dining-room; for she did not lift a fold of the trailing robe of glossy white linen bordered with black velvet that followed her imperious steps.

Don Claudio was familiar with the several indications of his mother’s moods, and he followed in silence, carefully avoiding the glistening wake of her progress. When she had seated herself in the arbor, he took the chair opposite her, half filled a little rose-colored cup with coffee, dropped a single cube of sugar into it, stirred it with a tiny spoon that had the Loredan shield at the end of its slender twisted stem, and gravely set the cup before her.

He had not once raised his eyes to her face.

She watched him with a scrutinizing gaze. He was evidently expecting a reprimand; yet there was neither anger nor confusion in his handsome face. It had not lost its preoccupied and even sorrowful expression. She sipped her coffee in silence, and waited till he had drunk his.

“You were at Ca’ Mora last evening and this morning,” she said abruptly, when he set his cup down.

“My master is dying!” he responded quietly.

Madama was for a moment disconcerted. The old professor with whom her son had for two years been studying oriental languages was a man of note among the learned. He had exercised a beneficial influence over the mind of Don Claudio; and for a while she had been glad that an enthusiasm for study should counteract the natural downward tendency of a life full of worldly prosperity and its attendant temptations. Only of late had she become aware of any danger in this intimacy.