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Nanina promised compliance; but she spoke rather absently, and seemed scarcely conscious of the kind familiarity which marked the doctor's manner. The truth was, that all her thoughts were occupied with what he had been saying by Fabio's bedside. She had not lost one word of the conversation while the doctor was talking of his patient, and of the conditions on which his recovery depended.
Muzzio, on the other hand, had a swarthy face and black hair, and in his dark brown eyes there was not the merry light, nor on his lips the genial smile of Fabio; his thick eyebrows overhung narrow eyelids, while Fabio's golden eyebrows formed delicate half-circles on his pure, smooth brow. In conversation, too, Muzzio was less animated.
While her eyes and thoughts were still compassionately fixed on him, the door of the bedroom opened, and the doctor came in, followed by Andrea D'Arbino, whose share in the strange adventure with the Yellow Mask caused him to feel a special interest in Fabio's progress toward recovery. "Asleep, I see; and sighing in his sleep," said the doctor, going to the bedside.
"Your hand," she murmured, incoherently, "with that signet on it is exactly like like Fabio's!" And before I had time to say a word she went off into a violent fit of hysterics sobs, little cries, and laughter all intermingled in that wild and reasonless distraction that generally unnerves the strongest man who is not accustomed to it.
"I do not presume to say, for I have no means of knowing." "Ah, there you are with your moderation again. Now, I do presume to assert that she must be either one or the other or she would not have forbidden Nanina to say anything about her in answer to all my first natural inquiries. Where is Maddalena? I thought she was here a minute ago." "She is in Fabio's room," answered Father Rocco, softly.
He took up the box with the mask in it, and beckoning to Nanina to follow him, led the way to Fabio's chamber. About six months after the events already related, Signor Andrea D'Arbino and the Cavaliere Finello happened to be staying with a friend, in a seaside villa on the Castellamare shore of the bay of Naples. Most of their time was pleasantly occupied on the sea, in fishing and sailing.
"It is for his good," said Father Rocco, calmly: "for Fabio's good, remember." "What would he think of me if I went away? Oh, if I had but learned to write! If I could only write Fabio a letter!" "Am I not to be depended on to explain to him all that he ought to know?" "How can I go away from him! Oh! Father Rocco, how can you ask me to go away from him?" "I will ask you to do nothing hastily.
Fabio shuddered, ran into the pavilion.... Muzzio was standing in the middle of the room playing on the violin. Fabio rushed up to him. 'You have been in the garden, your clothes are wet with rain. 'No ... I don't know ... I think ... I have not been out ... Muzzio answered slowly, seeming amazed at Fabio's entrance and his excitement. Fabio seized him by the hand.
Nanina was thinking again of all that the physician had said the day before by Fabio's bedside, and these thoughts brought with them others, equally absorbing, that were connected with the mysterious story of the young nobleman's adventure with the Yellow Mask. Thus preoccupied, she had little attention left for the gambols of the dog. Even the beauty of the morning appealed to her in vain.
While he lay, his head in his hand, holding his feverish breath, and given up to painful reflection, the moon rose again upon a cloudless sky; and together with its beams, through the half-transparent window-panes, there began, from the direction of the pavilion or was it Fabio's fancy? to come a breath, like a light, fragrant current ... then an urgent, passionate murmur was heard ... and at that instant he observed that Valeria was beginning faintly to stir.
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