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I can hear them!" He held up his hand. Not far away there was a sound of voices speaking together. "Shall I go and tell them, Signora?" After a moment Hermione said: "Yes, Gaspare go and tell them." He went away, and she waited, leaning on the balustrade and looking down to the dim sea, from which only the night before Ruffo's voice had floated up to her, singing the song of Mergellina.
Hermione was still governed by the desire to be alone for a little while with Ruffo, and the sensation of intense reserve a reserve that seemed even partially physical that she felt towards Artois made her dislike Ruffo's public exhibition of a gratitude that, expressed in private, would have been sweet to her.
This look struck her to a terrible melancholy, yet she met it firmly, almost fiercely, with a glance that fought it, that strove to beat it back. And with a steady voice she repeated the question he had not answered. "Did Ruffo's mother ever know your Padrone?" Gaspare moved his lips, passing his tongue over them. His eyes fell. He moved his arm, trying to shift it from his Padrona's hand.
Neither his powers nor Ruffo's, he argued, extended to granting such a capitulation. Ruffo, indeed, had been expressly forbidden to do so; a fact which rendered the paper void from the first.
He had never inquired Ruffo's second name. He might make a guess at it. Should he? He looked at a group of fishermen who were talking loudly on the sand just beyond the low wall. One of them had a handsome face bronzed by the sun, frank hazel eyes, a mouth oddly sensitive for one of his class.
There was a waggon with four horses came as near as it could get to us in the woods yonder by Ruffo's, and the driver told Ruffo that the gentry he drove had come by road from that town by the sea I forget its name in order to see the river, this river, our river; and that he had brought another posse of gentry two weeks or more on the same errand, and that they were a-measuring and a-plumbing it, and that they were going to get possession of its somehow or other, but Ruffo could not hear anything more than that; and I supposed that you knew, because this part of it is yours if it be any man's; this part of it that runs through the Terra Vergine."
She listened sympathetically, occasionally putting in a word, till suddenly Fabiano said: "Antonio Bernari will be out to-day. I suppose you know that, Signora?" "Antonio Bernari! Who is he? I never heard of him." Fabiano looked surprised. "But he is Ruffo's Patrigno. He is the husband of Maddalena." Hermione stood still on the pavement. She did not know why for a moment.
Since she had suffered at the hands of death, Hermione felt very pitiful for women. She would gladly have gone to see Ruffo's mother, have striven to help her more, both materially and morally. But as to a visit Peppina seemed to bar the way. And as to more money help she remembered Gaspare's warning. Perhaps he knew something of the mother that she did not know.
Now, as she leaned out, her soul felt old and haggard, and the contact with the youth and freshness of the morning emphasized its inability to be influenced any more by youthful wonders, by the graciousness and inspiration that are the gifts of dawn. Was that Ruffo's boat?
Hermione hesitated. She knew Gaspare had been to Mergellina. She knew he had been to see Ruffo's mother. If that were so her journey would probably be in vain. In their conflict Gaspare had struck the first blow. Could anything be gained by her going? Gaspare saw, and perhaps read accurately, her hesitation. "It will get very hot to-day, Signora," he said, carelessly. His words decided Hermione.
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