I asked a friend who has lived
for years not many miles away, if he could tell me what it meant."
"And could he tell you?"
"He told me a story which he believed but would not vouch for. Only, a
very old inhabitant told it to him. It appeals to me as true. It must be
true." A new warmth stole into Vanno's voice as he spoke. They had both
been looking up at the tablet on the rock, but as that thrill like a
chord on a violin struck her ear, Mary turned to him. Their eyes met, as
they had so often met, but to-day there was no coldness in Vanno's, or
hurt pride in Mary's.
"Can you think of any reason for the bad English?" he asked. He longed
to hear what she would say.
She thought for a minute. "Could it be," she reflected aloud, "that the
person who had the tablet put up associated this place with some one who
was English--maybe a woman, if he was a man--and so he wanted to use her
language, not his own?"
"You have guessed right!" exclaimed Vanno, boyishly delighted with her
intuition. "He was an Italian. He loved an English girl." The romantic
dark eyes which had so often burned with gloomy fire in looking at her
burned with a different flame for an instant; then quickly, as if with a
common impulse, the girl and the man tore their looks apart. "They met
here on the Riviera," Vanno went on, not quite steadily. "It was at this
spot they first found out that they loved each other, according to the
story of my friend."
He paused involuntarily.
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