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Updated: June 20, 2025
"After all," observed Macomer, absently, "it is only a woman." "Only a woman?" Matilde's lip curled. "I am only a woman." Macomer nodded slowly, as though realizing what that meant, but he said nothing in answer. With his hands under the table he slipped low down in his chair, his head bent forward upon his breast, in deep thought.
"Can you not suggest anything?" asked Matilde, at last, gazing at him somewhat scornfully. "After all, this is your fault. You have dragged me into this ruin with you." "I know, I know," he repeated in a low voice. "But we cannot do it now with that woman there." "No. It is impossible now." Matilde's tones sank to a whisper.
"Yes. Of course, you have none in me?" He laughed suddenly, and the sound was jarring and startling, like the unexpected breaking of plates in a quiet room. Matilde's lips quivered and her brow contracted spasmodically.
Matilde's beauty and conversation had sufficed him, for in his opinion he had never known any one to be compared with her; and on her side she had been strong enough to make a slave of him from the first.
She raised her head slowly and wearily as the young girl entered, and then started visibly, as she recognized her. "It is I," said Veronica, when she had closed the door. She came and stood beside the couch on which her aunt lay, and she looked down at the reclining woman. Matilde's listless hands suddenly clasped each other. "Yes," she answered, with an effort. "Are you going out?
First she wished a little pin at her throat, and then she gave it back to the woman and told her to look for another which she well knew would be hard to find. Then she quarrelled with a belt she wore, for just then belts were in fashion, as they are periodically without the slightest reason, and she thought that perhaps she would not wear one at all, and she asked Matilde's opinion.
There was nothing, perhaps, involving himself alone, which he would have refused to do for Matilde's sake, under the pressure of her strong will. But what she required of him now was more than that, and worse. After a night of thought, he still felt that he could not do it.
It was easy to be sure that such simple things had not been within Matilde's reach, and it was Elettra's duty to go to the pantry where coffee was made, and to bring the little tray to Veronica's room. At night, the young girl had a glass of water and a biscuit set beside her, when she went to sleep, but she rarely touched either.
Of the servants who had fled, Matilde's maid was the first to come back when she learned that no one was dead. As the night wore on towards dawn, and the countess learned that Veronica was alive and not at all likely to die, she silently turned her face to the wall and tore her pocket-handkerchief slowly with her teeth.
The momentary shock is presently forgotten when the young nerves are rested and the vision of a great moment fades to the half-tone of the general past. Between her present, too, and the night of Bosio's death, had come the attempt upon her own life, and all the sudden change that had followed the catastrophe. She was too brave to realize, even now, that she might have died at Matilde's hands.
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