It will be seen that Luigi had taken some liberties with Bottiglia's composition.
A week later he received the following reply:—
"Dearest Luigi,
"I have received your good, kind letter, and rejoice to hear of your welfare; but if you write to me again, as I hope you will, you must not let your friend, Signor Antonio, compose your letter for you. I like your own style much better than his. I suppose all that nonsense about love and broken hearts was his, was it not?
"I do not quite understand what you mean by the promise you speak of in the postscript, but I hope—oh! dear Luigi, I do hope—that you cannot really think I ever engaged myself to marry you. Such a thing would have been impossible—we never could have been happy as man and wife; and indeed it is wrong of me even to speak of such a thing now; for I am engaged to be married, and the ceremony is to take place very shortly. My future husband is the Comte de Chagny, a French gentleman. I know you will wish me all good fortune in this new state of life, and I shall be so pleased if you will send me a letter—written all by yourself this time—to say so.
"And now, dear Luigi, I must say adieu. I am, and always shall be,
"Your most affectionate friend,
"Annunziata Vannini."
Luigi received this letter at the postoffice, and read it in the street. When he had come to the last words he rammed his hat down over his eyes, and set off, with rather an unsteady step, to walk home. At his own door he met old Antonio, who accosted him with a pleasant inquiry as to whether he had heard yet from his lady-love. The next moment Bottiglia found himself lying on his back in the street, and, on picking himself up, with much impiety of language, caught a glimpse of Luigi entering his own house, the door of which he shut and locked behind him.
And that was the last Sorrento ever saw of Luigi Ratta.
CHAPTER IV.
As may be supposed, Annunziata got no answer to the rather ill-worded and confused note she had sent to Luigi. Perhaps she had hardly expected to receive any; and yet she was disappointed when none came. She was conscious of having—however innocently, and with whatever good intentions—behaved ill to her old playmate. She ought, as she now felt, to have been more firm with him during that interview when he had pleaded so hard for impossibilities. She ought not to have allowed him to suppose, for an instant, that she could ever be brought to marry him. But he had looked so unhappy—and so handsome; and it had been so much easier and pleasanter to make a compromise than to quarrel. And then she tried to stifle her qualms of conscience by the reflection that she had expressly and emphatically stated that she would give no promise. Still she could not feel quite happy about Luigi; and there were moments when she almost regretted the last few years of her life, and half doubted whether it might not have been better for her and for everybody if she had lived and died obscure, married the honest fisherman, and never seen more of the world than that loveliest portion of it, the Bay of Naples.
But it was now far too late in the day to indulge in such thoughts as these. She was going to marry the Comte de Chagny, a middle-aged young man of sporting proclivities and diminished fortune, who had lived every year of the twenty that had elapsed since his first introduction to Parisian society. She was going to marry this easy-going, rather broken-down gentleman, who had fallen a little in love with her beautiful face, and very much in love with her money-bags, and with whom she, for her part, was assuredly not in love at all.
There were, however, circumstances which made it almost necessary that Annunziata should marry somebody—and why not this one, who seemed polite and kind-hearted, as well as another? Signor Sassi was getting old, and the signora became more unwieldy every day. It was no longer possible for the worthy couple to rush from Paris to St. Petersburg, from St. Petersburg to Berlin, and from Berlin to London, according to the erratic movements of the young prima donna; yet Sassi did not like the idea of her travelling alone, or only with a lady-companion. Marriage seemed the only way out of the difficulty; and so, when the Comte de Chagny placed his title, his debts, and his still handsome person at her feet, the Vannini accepted the whole of this valuable lot, only stipulating that she should be allowed to remain on the stage. M. de Chagny made no objection whatever to this. To have insisted on his wife's re-
