Lelia Camin and Fedele Vayla di Brea

The relationship between Lelia Camin and Fedele Vayla di Brea turns on a quiet but consequential misreading. At their first meeting, Lelia feels an impetuous sympathy for Fedele, but Fedele’s distracted, seemingly cold manner makes Lelia believe she is unwelcome. Lelia answers with proud distance; Fedele, unaware of the warmth beneath it, takes that distance for dislike. The friendship they might have begun is thus delayed not by hostility but by two people mistaking reserve for rejection. When Fedele eventually draws close to Lelia, her affection is expressed not only in tenderness but in the difficult work of protecting a young woman whose choices remain constrained by family and circumstance.

First Impressions and Misunderstanding

Fedele’s response to Lelia is inconsistent in a way the young woman cannot interpret. She smiles and offers a languid greeting, then says nothing to Lelia for the rest of the visit. The narration attributes this manner to Fedele’s occasional distraction or passing gloom, and notes that her inexplicable cold spells have often surprised other people. Lelia does not know that explanation. Feeling strongly drawn to Fedele, she concludes that she must be antipathetic to her and adopts a manner that is all the more proudly cold because she longs for a warmer friendship.

Fedele makes the corresponding mistake. She believes that she has inspired Lelia’s dislike, regrets it inwardly, but does not have the expansive temperament that might prompt her to approach the girl and repair the impression. Her silence therefore gives Lelia no evidence with which to correct her judgment. The result is a reciprocal loop: Fedele’s reserve provokes Lelia’s guardedness, and Lelia’s guardedness appears to confirm Fedele’s fear that she is unwelcome. The passage distinguishes the warmth each feels from the coolness each sees, making their estrangement an accident of conduct and interpretation rather than a deliberate refusal of affection.

The Cost of the Unspoken Distance

The misunderstanding acquires weight because Fedele and Marcello Trento share an old bond, and Lelia is precious to him as the surviving part of his son Andrea Trento. After the death of Marcello’s wife and an initial exchange of visits, Fedele no longer goes to Montanina, and Marcello no longer visits her home. Fedele’s withdrawal follows her sense that Lelia dislikes her; Marcello, knowing Fedele’s pronounced sympathies and antipathies, assumes that Lelia herself is the object of one of them. He is hurt on his son’s behalf.

The two older friends still meet on the road between Velo and Arsiero and sometimes walk together, but they never speak of Lelia. She becomes the unspoken cold point in their friendship. The narrator likens the chill to air flowing from deep openings in a mountain: slight, hidden, yet perceptible even in summer sunshine. Fedele senses the change in Marcello and remains silent. She will not accuse Lelia to him, even though she believes the young woman’s conduct has caused the separation. Her silence preserves her reverence for Lelia and protects Marcello from a direct grievance against the person he holds dear, but it also leaves the original error unresolved.

A Warm Reopening

The relationship changes when Fedele comes to Montanina while Lelia is playing Schumann. She has arrived to keep Marcello company and, seeing Massimo Alberti absorbed beside the fireplace, approaches him. She explains that she is there for him, then turns to Lelia, embraces her affectionately, praises her music, and takes her arm as they return toward the fireplace. The embrace is a decisive contrast to the earlier visit: Fedele behaves as though no shadow had ever touched her friendship with Lelia. There is no narrated confrontation about the old misunderstanding and no demand that Lelia acknowledge it. Fedele resumes intimacy through an unambiguous gesture.

She also tells Lelia that she and Massimo’s mother had been friends and that Massimo is to dine at her home the following day, because they have much to talk about his mother. Her welcome therefore connects personal affection with an offer of family memory and hospitality. Massimo is moved and can only begin to thank her. Lelia accompanies Fedele out as far as the carriage waiting beyond the large gate. The scene makes the renewed friendship visible in ordinary actions—an embrace, an arm linked, a shared departure—rather than in an explanation of what went wrong.

Affection as Practical Protection

Later, Fedele’s relationship with Lelia takes on a more explicitly protective, almost maternal form. After Marcello’s death, Lelia is named his universal heir, while Teresina receives a daily bequest of five lire. The notice also reports that Girolamo da Camin has declared himself Lelia’s father and is coming to see her. Lelia is twenty and a few months, although Marcello had believed her older; the discrepancy matters because she still has months before reaching her majority. Her inheritance, her father’s claim, and her limited independence converge in the question of where she can safely live and who may decide for her.

Fedele does not treat the inheritance as a reason to press Lelia into reconciliation. When Girolamo da Camin visits her at Fedele’s home, Fedele tells him that Lelia is not well and prepares him for the possibility that she may refuse to see him. She nevertheless makes Lelia receive him after having firmly insisted that she do so. Lelia stands to greet her father, rigid and grave; she allows his kisses but does not invite him to sit. He gives her a packet of ten-lire notes, saying that the money is hers and that he will render an account in a few months. The encounter shows the strain between legal and familial claims and Lelia’s actual trust, while Fedele mediates the meeting without pretending its discomfort has disappeared.

A Maternal Role with Limits

When Lelia later hopes to remain in Valsolda with Massimo, Fedele insists that she must leave with her. She believes the answer from Lelia’s father will be negative and argues that Lelia cannot stay there. Massimo reports the substance of Lelia’s letter and thinks a refusal may not be certain; Fedele accepts that possibility but still judges departure necessary. Lelia protests that she hopes Fedele herself will rest there for a few days and then accompany her to Turin. She dreads returning to Velo, and points out that only months remain before she comes of age. Fedele counters that Turin would leave her without support.

After reflection, Fedele proposes Santhià, where her cousin can receive Lelia, provided her father permits it. The arrangement is worked out in detail: Fedele will rest that day, see a doctor the following morning, and, if cleared to travel, take Lelia to Turin; her cousin will meet the girl at Santhià station, and Eufemia will continue with her. Letters addressed to Lelia at San Mamette are to be forwarded. Fedele ultimately yields on the question of paternal permission, reasoning that Girolamo has always shown her deference, that her cousins’ home is safe, and that Lelia so abhors a return to Velo. Her decision is protective but not effortless: she knows she is exercising a freedom she would not possess as Lelia’s actual mother. The bond therefore ends this episode as both affection and responsibility, with Fedele trying to secure Lelia’s safety while remaining acutely aware of the limits of her assumed maternal place.