"I did, Signora, but you know where my room is." Ragna did,—down at the end of a long corridor shut off by a door from the rest of the house. Why, oh why had she been so blind?
"And Cook was out, nursing her sick mother. Afterwards I said to him: 'I will tell the Signora,' and he said: 'You will do nothing of the kind. If you dare so much as hint to her I will throw you out neck and crop without a character. Be good, Linella, and I will give you a present. I said I did not want his present, that I was not afraid of being turned out. Then he grew very angry and put his hands round my neck, and said he would strangle me if I would not promise to keep quiet. 'Padronissimo!' I answered, 'but if you kill me the police will get you!' He was very angry, but that frightened him, and he let his hands drop and I stood facing him with my arms crossed,—so! 'Look here, Carolina,' he said suddenly in a wheedling voice, 'you are fond of the Padrona, I know, if you tell her it will grieve her and you do not want to do that!' Signora! he had the courage to say that, after the way he treats you and all! But it was true and I knew I would have to be quiet, so I said, 'If I do say nothing it will be because of the Signora and not for you. I despise you, I hate you, but I do not fear you, you cannot harm me!' 'Have a care!' he said, and his eyes got like those of the Evil One in that picture in the studio. 'You are a little devil, Carolina, but I am more than a match for you. I tell you, beware!' Signora, that fired my blood, I stood up to him and I said: 'You are the husband of my Padrona, but you are not my master. I will keep silence because I don't want to hurt her, she has always been kind to me, but if you ever dare touch me again I shall tell her; it is better that she should know than be shamed in her own house, and I will kill you, I swear it on the Cross!' He sneered at me, Signora. 'And the police you mention so freely,' he said, 'what of them?' 'I will tell them I did it to save my honour.' 'Honour,' he said, 'you guttersnippet, who would believe you? Do you think they don't know your story in Questura?' It made me mad, I took my scissors from the table and I flew at him—he nearly broke my wrist wrenching them from me, but not before I had scratched him well. 'Little viper!' he yelled, 'assassin!' I thought he was going to kill me, but he turned and went away."
Ragna had followed every word, every gesture, with a sickening horror; she had imagined some tale of annoyance, but not this, and the leer of the portrait on the wall seemed to confirm every word of the girl's tale.
"Well, my poor child, has,—has he,—?"
The girl threw herself impulsively on her knees, beside her mistress and lifted the hem of her skirt to her lips.
"Signora mia," she moaned, "you are too good, you are an angel! Any other lady would have thrown me into the street without hearing me out."
"Hush, my poor girl," Ragna interrupted, "you are a victim and to be pitied. How should I blame you, since your wrong is partly my fault, I should have seen, should have guessed—"
"Signora, don't worry about me, I have had trouble before, as you know, and no one can blame me for what is not my fault since you don't."
Ragna looked at the girl in surprise at the simplicity with which she accepted the fait accompli, though it was characteristic of her and her race. She could see no reason for weeping over spilt milk, hers was the rational and childlike philosophy of the people—"cosa fatta capo ha," and a shrug of the shoulders for the inevitable. The one thought is to "rimediare" in the present. This state of mind appeared to Ragna so entirely enviable and sent her back over so long a train of thought in which she viewed her own experience for the first time with new eyes, and perceiving the uselessness of her futile beating against the bars of her fate, that with difficulty she brought herself back to a sense of the present. She remembered that the maid had not answered her last question.
"Tell me, Carolina, since you did not come to me at once, what has obliged you to speak now?"