When Bosio was grown up, his tutor had remained his friend--the only really intimate friend he had in the world, and a true and devoted one.

It was perhaps because he was too much attached to Bosio that Matilde Macomer had induced him at last to accept the parish in the mountains with the chaplaincy of the ancestral castle of the Serra,--an office which was a total sinecure, as the family had rarely gone thither to spend a few weeks, even in the days of the late prince.

Matilde hated the place for its appalling gloominess and wild scenery, and Veronica, to whom it now belonged, had never seen it at all.

It had the reputation of being haunted by all manner of ghosts and goblins, and during the first ten years following the Italian annexation of Naples, the surrounding mountains had been infested by outlaws and brigands.

But Don Teodoro, as curate and chaplain, received a considerable stipend which enabled him to procure for himself books at his pleasure, when he could bring himself to curtail the daily and yearly charities in which he spent almost all he received.
He was, indeed, a man torn between two inclinations which almost amounted to passions,--charity and the love of learning,--and their action was so evenly balanced that it was a real pain to him either to deny himself the book he coveted, or to forfeit the pleasure of giving the money it would cost to the poor.