ARE there any? You must know now."
"Yes, there are a great many; more than I supposed."
I was struck with the way her voice trembled as she told me this.
"Do you mean that you have got them in there--and that I may see them?"
"I don't think you can see them," said Miss Tita with an extraordinary
expression of entreaty in her eyes, as if the dearest hope she had in the
world now was that I would not take them from her. But how could she expect
me to make such a sacrifice as that after all that had passed between us?
What had I come back to Venice for but to see them, to take them?
My delight in learning they were still in existence was such that
if the poor woman had gone down on her knees to beseech me never to
mention them again I would have treated the proceeding as a bad joke.
"I have got them but I can't show them," she added.
"Not even to me? Ah, Miss Tita!" I groaned, with a voice of infinite
remonstrance and reproach.
She colored, and the tears came back to her eyes;
I saw that it cost her a kind of anguish to take such a stand
but that a dreadful sense of duty had descended upon her.
It made me quite sick to find myself confronted with that
particular obstacle; all the more that it appeared to me I
had been extremely encouraged to leave it out of account.
I almost considered that Miss Tita had assured me that if she
had no greater hindrance than that--! "You don't mean to say
you made her a deathbed promise? It was precisely against
your doing anything of that sort that I thought I was safe.
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