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CORLEONE




THE NOVELS OF F. MARION CRAWFORD.

_New Uniform Edition. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. each._


MR. ISAACS: A Tale of Modern India.
DOCTOR CLAUDIUS: A True Story.
ROMAN SINGER.
ZOROASTER.
TALE OF A LONELY PARISH.
KHALED: A Tale of Arabia.
WITCH OF PRAGUE.
THREE FATES.
MARION DARCHE: A Story without Comment.
CHILDREN OF THE KING.
KATHERINE LAUDERDALE.
MARZIO'S CRUCIFIX.
PAUL PATOFF.
WITH THE IMMORTALS.
GREIFENSTEIN.
SANT' ILARIO.
CIGARETTE-MAKER'S ROMANCE.
PIETRO GHISLERI.
DON ORSINO.
RALSTONS.
CASA BRACCIO.
ADAM JOHNSTONE'S SON.
ROSE OF YESTERDAY.
TAQUISARA. A Novel.
CORLEONE.

VIA CRUCIS. A Romance of the Second Crusade. Crown 8vo. 6s.
IN THE PALACE OF THE KING. Crown 8vo. 6s.
MARIETTA: A Maid of Venice. Crown 8vo. 6s.
WHOSOEVER SHALL OFFEND. Crown 8vo. 6s.
THE HEART OF ROME: A Tale of the "Lost Water." Crown 8vo. 6s.
CECILIA: A Story of Modern Rome. Crown 8vo. 6s.
LOVE IN IDLENESS. A Bar Harbour Tale. Fcap. 8vo. 2s.


MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON.




CORLEONE

A Tale of Sicily

BY F. MARION CRAWFORD


London

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1905

_All rights reserved_


COPYRIGHT
1896

BY
F. MARION CRAWFORD

_First Edition (2 Vols. Globe 8vo) 1897_
_Second Edition (Crown 8vo) 1898_
_Reprinted 1902, 1905_




CHAPTER I


'If you never mean to marry, you might as well turn priest, too,' said
Ippolito Saracinesca to his elder brother, Orsino, with a laugh.

'Why?' asked Orsino, without a smile. 'It would be as sensible to say
that a man who had never seen some particular thing, about which he has
heard much, might as well put out his eyes.'

The young priest laughed again, took up the cigar he had laid upon the
edge of the piano, puffed at it till it burned freely, and then struck
two or three chords of a modulation. A sheet of ruled paper on which
several staves of music were roughly jotted down in pencil stood on the
rack of the instrument.

Orsino stretched out his long legs, leaned back in his low chair, and
stared at the old gilded rosettes in the square divisions of the carved
ceiling. He was a discontented man, and knew it, which made his
discontent a matter for self-reproach, especially as it was quite clear
to him that the cause of it lay in himself.

He had made two great mistakes at the beginning of life, when barely of
age, and though neither of them had ultimately produced any serious
material consequences, they had affected his naturally melancholic
temper and had brought out his inherited hardness of disposition. At the
time of the great building speculations in Rome, several years earlier,
he had foolishly involved himself with his father's old enemy, Ugo del
Ferice, and had found himself at last altogether in the latter's power,
though not in reality his debtor. At the same time, he had fallen very
much in love with a young widow, who, loving him very sincerely in her
turn, but believing, for many reasons, that if she married him she would
be doing him an irreparable injury, had sacrificed herself by marrying
Del Ferice instead, selling herself to the banker for Orsino's release,
without the latter's knowledge. When it was all over, Orsino had found
himself a disappointed man at an age when most young fellows are little
more than inexperienced boys, and the serious disposition