It was sufficient that he had died satisfied in seeing her married to a great noble, and that she had been able, in his last days, to relieve him from the distress of debt and embarrassment which had doubtless contributed to shorten his life.
The proud woman who had thus once humbled herself for an object she thought good, had never referred to her action again.

She had never spoken of her position to Padre Filippo, so that the monk wondered and admired her steadfastness.

If she suffered, it was in silence, without comment and without complaint, and so she would have suffered to the end.
But it had been ordered otherwise.

For months she had known that the interest she felt in Giovanni Saracinesca was increasing: she had choked it down, had done all in her power to prove herself indifferent to him; but at last the crisis had come.

When he spoke to her of his marriage, she had felt--she knew now that it was so--that she loved him.