"I have something that lies very heavily at my heart; so heavily,
that sometimes it seems to me that I cannot bear it any longer. It is
true you are young, but you are so sensible, and have seen a great
deal; and it seems to me that I should be relieved if I could talk it
over with you.

"You see how Silvio suffers, and how ill he is,--my only son. Now I have
not only the distress of his sickness, which can never be healed, but I
often feel that perhaps it is a punishment from God, because I am
holding and enjoying an unlawful property: although, to be sure, I did
not seek to get it, and do not wish to keep it. But I will tell you
every thing from the beginning.

"When we were married, Menotti and I,--he brought me over from Riva,
where my father still lives,--Menotti had a very good friend living
here, who was just about leaving, because the land had become hateful to
him, owing to the death of his wife. This friend had a house--a little
one--and large fields, though they were not very productive. He wanted
my husband to take them all, and said that the land did not yield much;
but if he would keep it all in good order, and the house also, that he
would return to claim it in a few years.

"So the friends made their arrangements together, and said nothing about
interest. My husband said, 'You will want to find every thing as it
should be when you return;' for he meant to put it all in good
condition, and understood the cultivating of land perfectly, which was
thoroughly well known to his friend, who willingly left it all in his
hands. But about one year later the railroad was built, and the little
house had to come down, and the garden was taken too, with the fields,