22The morning was especially cool and windy for a Sunday this late in April. Manisante was in the drawing room observing his daughter by the fire, concentrated on embroidering the final pieces of her wedding trousseau. The room had that sweetish smell of mildew coming from tapestries hanging on the walls. The girl had started her sewing as soon as they had returned from the church. A vacant expression drifting across her dull face as though lost in a world of dreams and fantasies, wondering about her future life as a wife. In that pose of enchanted sweetness he could almost consider her beautiful but just as suddenly his thoughts flew to the other girl, Isabella, the girl he had ordered to be murdered by his two accomplices. A shudder of horror ran through him. But only for a moment, then
