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What surprised me rather" she was speaking more slowly now, and more unevenly "was this " "Si?" Gaspare's voice was loud. He lifted up his hands and laid them heavily on his knees. "Si?" he repeated. "After you had spoken with her, she cried, Ruffo's mother cried, Gaspare. And she said, 'To think of its being Gaspare on the island!" "Is that all?" "No."
At first he could only see Ruffo's side-face. But the woman was exactly opposite to him. She was neatly dressed in some dark stuff, and wore a thin shawl, purple in color, over her shoulders. She looked middle-aged. Had she been an Englishwoman Artois would have guessed her to be near fifty. But as she was evidently a Southerner it was possible that she was very much younger.
The horrors of feudalism, aided by the earthquake of 1784 and by the effects of Cardinal Ruffo's Holy Crusade, had converted the country into a pandemonium. In a single year thirty-three thousand crimes were recorded against the brigands of the Kingdom of Naples; in a single month they are said to have committed 1200 murders in Calabria alone.
And now Hermione, feeling the withdrawal from her of her friend, believing in the withdrawal from her of her child, spoke to herself, pleading her own cause to her own soul against invisible detractors. One visitor the island had at this time. Each evening, when the darkness fell, the boat of Ruffo's employer glided into the Pool of San Francesco.
But he was a watchdog who did not bark, but who was ready to bite all those who ventured to approach his two mistresses unless he was sure of their credentials. And of this boy's, Ruffo's, he was not sure. Hermione recalled the boy; his brown healthiness, his laughing eyes and lips, his strong young body, his careless happy voice.
"Gaspare, it seems to me" Hermione was speaking now very slowly, like one shaping a thought in her mind while she spoke "it seems to me strange that you and Ruffo's mother should have known each other so well long before Ruffo was born, and that she should cry because she met you at the Festa, and that afterwards she should ask Ruffo that." "Strange?"
She got up. She would start at once for Mergellina. As she went up-stairs she remembered that she did not know where Ruffo's mother lived, what she was like, even what her name was. The boy had always spoken of her as "Mia Mamma." They dwelt at Mergellina. That was all she knew. She did not choose to ask Gaspare anything. She would go alone, and find out somehow for herself where Ruffo lived.
And then she stood trembling. Yes, it was Maurice whom she had seen again for an instant in the melting look of Ruffo's face. She felt frightened in the dark. Maurice when he kissed her for the last time, had looked at her like that. It could not be fancy. It was not. Was this the very first time she had noticed in Ruffo a likeness to her dead husband? She asked herself if it was. Yes.
Ruffo's boat was no doubt among them. There was one only a few hundred yards beyond the rocks from which Vere sometimes bathed. Perhaps that was his. Ruffo's boat! Ruffo! She put her elbows on the sill of the window and rested her face in her hands. Her eyes felt very dry, like sand she thought, and her mind felt dry too, as if insomnia was withering it up.
"Oh yes. I had a talk with Ruffo the other night. And he told me several things." Each time Hermione mentioned Ruffo's name it seemed to Artois that her voice softened, almost that she gave the word a caress. He longed to ask her something, but he was afraid to. He would try not to interfere with Fate. But he would not hasten its coming if it were coming. And he knew nothing.
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