Both Professor Rossano's children had inherited something of their father's nature, but Silvio had inherited it in a more complex way, perhaps, than his sister. In him the scientific tendency had shown itself in the more practical form of a love for the purely mechanical and utilitarian. Nevertheless, he had the same detached nature, the same facility for regarding life from the objective point of view, as his father, and the same good-humored if slightly cynical disposition. Of the two, Giacinta was probably the more completely practical, and had, perhaps, the harder disposition. Nor was this unnatural; for their mother had died when Silvio was a child between five and six years old, and Giacinta, being then nearly eight, had speedily acquired a certain sense of responsibility, which, owing to the professor's absorption in his scientific researches, largely increased as time went on. But Giacinta, also, had her full share of good-nature and sympathy, though she was incapable of, as it were, holding herself mentally aloof from the world around her as did her father and, to a certain degree, her brother.
Breakfast over, Professor Rossano soon retired again to the correction of his proofs, leaving Giacinta and Silvio alone together. For a short time neither of them spoke, and Silvio apparently devoted his whole attention to the proper roasting of the end of a "Verginia" cigar in the flame of a candle. Giacinta meditated on the possible contents of the piece of paper that she felt positive was still lying in a crumpled condition in her brother's pocket, and wondered what particular part the lady who had passed them on the staircase might be playing in the business--though she had already made a very natural guess at it. She would have given a good deal to know whether the note--or the memorandum, as Silvio had called it, with a possibly unconscious humor that had made Giacinta smile--was written by Bianca Acorari herself or by the quietly dressed young person who was, no doubt, Bianca's daily governess. If it were from Donna Bianca, then things must have advanced to what the professor would have termed the contagious stage--only Giacinta did not employ that simile, its suggestiveness having escaped her--which would be a decidedly serious affair. If, however, as was far more probable, the missive came from the governess, who had been disappointed of the expected opportunity to give it to Silvio unobserved, and so had dropped it for him to pick up, the matter was serious, too, but not so serious. If Silvio had won over the governess to aid him in furthering his plans, Giacinta thought that she, too, might manage to do a little corrupting on her own account with the same individual. It did not immediately strike her that Silvio's sex, as well as his particularly attractive face and personality, might have removed many difficulties out of his path in dealing with the demure-looking female who devoted three hours a day to the improvement of Donna Bianca's education.
