"It is a proof of affection which I shall never forget! You will live a hundred years--a thousand, if God will it! But the mere wish to leave me your fortune is a token of love and esteem which I shall know how to value." Donna Veronica kissed her aunt's fresh cheek coldly, and drew back as soon as she could.
"I am glad that you are pleased," she answered in a cool and colourless voice.
She felt that she had said enough, and, so far as she expected any thanks, her aunt had said too much.

She had made the will and had signed it, for the sake of peace, and she asked nothing but peace in return.
Ever since she had left the convent in which she had been educated and had come to live with her aunt, the question of this will had arisen at least once every day, and she knew by heart every argument which had been invented to induce her to make it.

The principal one had always been the same.

She had been told that if, in the inscrutable ways of Providence, she should chance to die young, unmarried and childless, the whole of the great Acireale property would go to relations whom she had never seen and of whom she scarcely knew the names.

This, the Countess Macomer had insisted, would be a terrible misfortune, and as human life was uncertain, even when one was very young, it was the duty of Veronica to provide against it, by leaving everything to the one remaining member of the Serra family who, with herself, represented the direct line, who had taken a mother's place and duties in bringing up the orphan girl, and who had been ready to sacrifice every personal consideration for the sake of the child's welfare.
Veronica did not see clearly that the Countess Macomer had ever really sacrificed anything at all in the execution of her trust as guardian, any more than the count himself, who, with Cardinal Campodonico, was a joint trustee, had ever been put to any inconvenience, beyond that of being the uncle by marriage of one of the richest heiresses in Italy.