Page:Manzoni - The Betrothed, 1834.djvu/49

 "Now, I will tell you all," said Lucy, wiping her eyes with her apron.

"Speak, speak!" cried at once her mother and her lover.

"Holy Virgin!" exclaimed Lucy, "that it should come to this!"—and with a voice interrupted by tears, she related that a few days previously, as she returned from weaving, and was loitering behind her companions, Don Roderick came up with her, in company with another gentleman; that the former sought to engage her in idle conversation; that she quickened her pace, without lending him an ear, and rejoined her companions; in the mean while she heard the other gentleman laugh, and Don Roderick say, "I'll lay a wager with you." The day following, on their return, they met them again, but Lucy kept in the midst of her companions, with her head down; the other gentleman burst into laughter, and Don Roderick said, "We will see, we will see." "Happily for me," continued Lucy, "this day was the last of the weaving. I related the adventure immediately"

"To whom didst thou relate it?" asked Agnes quickly, indignant at the idea of any one being preferred before her as a confidant.

"To Father Christopher, in confession, mamma," replied Lucy, in a tone of apology. "I told him all, the last time you and I went to the church of the convent; you may perhaps recollect my contrivances for delay on that morning, until there should pass some villagers in whose company we might go into the street; because I was so afraid"

The indignation of Agnes subsided at once, at the mention of a name so revered as Father Christopher's. "Thou didst well, my child," said she; "but why not tell it also to thy mother?"

For this, Lucy had had two very good reasons; the one, a desire not to disturb and frighten her mother with a circumstance she could not have prevented; the other, the dread of placing a secret, which she wished to be buried in her own bosom in danger of becoming known to all the village: of these two reasons she only alleged the first.