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Updated: May 5, 2025
If you drive along the beautiful shore of the Mergellina to-day, beneath the high promontory of Pausilipo, to the southwest of Naples, you will see there in ruins the tumbling rocks and stones of an unfinished palace, with the blue sea breaking over its foundations; and that is still called the palace of Queen Joanna.
Has she been in Naples?" "Signorina, I don't think so." "Where has she been?" "I believe the Signora has been to Mergellina." Vere began to tremble. "What can have happened there? What can have happened?" She trembled in every limb. Her face had become white. "Signorina, Signorina! Are you ill?" "No I don't know what to do what I ought to do.
I am glad you think that. Come and sit down on the bench." He drew her down beside him. He felt that he was with a child whom he must comfort. Gaspare stood always looking down over the rail of the terrace to the sea. "Vere!" "Yes, Monsieur Emile." "You mother is not ill as you thought feared. But to-day she has had, she must have had, a great shock." "But at Mergellina?"
"I should not wonder if she is on the cliff," said Hermione. "She often goes there at this hour. She goes to meet Ruffo." The name switched the mind of Artois on to a new and profoundly interesting train of thought. "Ruffo," he began slowly. "And you think it wise ?" He stopped. To-night he no longer dared frankly to speak his mind to Hermione. "I was at Mergellina the other day," he said.
At that moment he and his intellect seemed to him less than a handful of dust. "But this change of to-day is different," he said, slowly. "Your mother has had a dreadful shock." "At Mergellina?" "It must have been there." "But what could it be? We scarcely ever go there. We don't know any one there oh, except Ruffo."
And Ruffo, all ignorantly and unconsciously, had pierced the heart of Hermione. Artois knew nothing of what had happened that day at Mergellina, but he divined that it was Ruffo who, without words, had told Hermione the truth. It must have been Ruffo, in whom the dead man lived again.
During her seclusion there she had once been disturbed by Gaspare, who had come to ask her if she wanted him for anything, and, if not, whether he might go over to Mergellina for the rest of the afternoon to see some friends he had made there. She told him he was free till night, and he went away quickly, after one searching, wide-eyed glance at the face of his Padrona.
They went forward, and almost immediately heard a murmur of voices. "Vere is with some one," said Artois. "It must be Ruffo. It is Ruffo." She stood still. Artois stood still beside her. The night was windless. Voices travelled through the dreaming silence. "Don't be afraid. Sing it to me." Vere's voice was speaking. Then a boy's voice rang out in the song of Mergellina.
Shortly after this, Elgar would have risen to take his leave, but Mrs. Spence begged him to remain and lunch with them. The visitors from the Mergellina declined a similar invitation. Edward Spence was passing his morning at the Museum. On his return at luncheon-time, Eleanor met him with the intelligence that Reuben Elgar had presented himself, and was now in his sister's room.
And now idly, strangely, he had recalled them as he thought of Ruffo's young and careless attitude by the table of the ristorante that afternoon. The waiter, coming presently to bring the French Signore the plate of oysters from Fusaro, which he had ordered as the prelude to his dinner, was surprised by the deep gravity of his face, and said: "Don't you like 'A Mergellina, Signore?
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