Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/203

 castello. Crazy, I suppose, I do not blame the Contessa for preferring another man. The lover came back to her, but was unable to remove the knives which had been driven in by the blacksmith. He hacked off her hands at the wrist. But she died—shock, I suppose, and smoke and loss of blood.'

'Is it a true story?'

'It is an old one told of many ladies and lovers. But it was necessary to account in some way for the gutted castello and the fair ghost.'

'But if Mamma did not know the story, how did she happen to see the hands?'

'Oh, she had read some similar legend, perhaps about Sordello.'

They went together to the marble slab, and, even as Lanice gazed reverently upon it, she noticed that the age was misstated. If Mamma was indeed as young as that, she would have been but eleven when Lanice was born. She wondered if Roger had ever made any such calculations. He would, she thought, forgive them.

'I think she cared more for you than any one else,' said Roger, and stopped awkwardly, wishing he might presume to ask the girl whether or not she knew of the love Hittie had once lavished upon Mr. Matthews. They paid the ghostly children for tending Beppo before the gate, and got into the cart.

'For me?'

'Yes, of course she didn't care so very much for...'

'For any one?'

'No.'