She had not gone through half so much.
Presently Matilde returned, followed by Macomer, wrapped in a dark velvet dressing-gown, his face white and twitching, his usually smooth grey beard unbrushed, and his grey hair in disorder.

With drawn lids he looked at Veronica, and in his terror he tried to smile, but there was something at once cowardly and insolent in the expression--there was something else, too, which the young girl did not understand, a sort of vacancy of the brow and unnatural weakness of the mouth.
"I am glad that you have come," she said, when the door was shut.

"I have not much to say, and I wish you to hear it." They were all standing.

Gregorio steadied himself by the head of the couch, and was as erect as ever.
"I will tell you something which you do not know," said Veronica, fixing her eyes on him.

"Before Bosio died he told the whole truth to Don Teodoro Maresca, his friend.