"You are playing with him," he said in a low and angry voice.
The room was long, and Bianca and Ghisleri were at the other end of it. After he had spoken, Veronica stared at him a moment, in genuine amazement at his words and manner. Then her eyes gleamed, too, and the delicate nostrils quivered.
"You are insolent," she said coldly, and turning a little to the right, she passed him.
"No. I am his friend," he answered, scarcely above a whisper, as she went by.
He came back, shook hands with Bianca, bowed coldly to Veronica, and left the room within two minutes after Gianluca.
"What is the matter with Taquisara?" asked Ghisleri, carelessly. "He seems irritable."
"Does he? I suppose he is anxious about Don Gianluca."
Veronica was still pale when she spoke, but the tone was cold and indifferent.
Veronica had felt herself mortally insulted by Taquisara's manner, much more than by his words, though they had been offensive enough. Her impression of the man was completely changed, in a moment, and she hoped that she might never see him again, so long as she lived. It had been one thing to praise Gianluca to her, and to press his suit for him; it was quite another to lie in wait for her, as it were, at the end of a drawing-room and to reproach her brutally and angrily with wishing to break Gianluca's heart. As she thought of his eyes, and his face, and his low voice, she grew pale with anger herself, at the mere memory of his insolence.
It did not strike her that there could be any truth in his accusation. Gianluca was old enough to take care of himself. Was Taquisara his nurse, his keeper, his doctor? Gianluca was not making love to her in his letters, nor was she, in hers, encouraging him to do so. She was angry at the thought that the Sicilian should know anything of their correspondence, as it seemed evident that he must. It was true that her own friend, Bianca, knew something about it. She could forgive Gianluca, if he had confided too much in Taquisara, but she could not forgive Taquisara for having been the recipient of the confidence, and she would neither forgive nor forget the way in which he had shown her how much he knew.
For the first time in her life, Veronica longed to be a man, that she might not only resent the insult, but have satisfaction of the man who had insulted her. She felt that she was emphatically not playing with Gianluca, as Taquisara had expressed it. She had told him frankly, several months earlier, that she could not love him,--she had shaken her head and had said that she was sorry,--and neither he nor any one else had a right to suppose that she was now changing her mind. Since Gianluca was apparently willing to accept the position and to be her friend, it was nobody's affair but his and hers. She felt that she had been fully justified in what she had said to Taquisara. At the same time she was half conscious of being disappointed in the man, and of being wounded by the disappointment.