‘I suppose presentiments are very foolish,’ Maria observed thoughtfully. ‘Do they ever trouble you, Giuliana?’
‘Not often. But I remember once being oppressed with the certainty that Sigismondo was going to die in the course of the winter. It haunted me day and night for weeks and weeks. I used to dream that he was lying dead on the dining-room table. It was always the dining-room table, and at last I got nervous about sitting down at it.’
‘Well? Did anything happen?’ Maria seemed interested.
‘Oh, yes! The children had the mumps.’ She spoke thoughtfully.
Very sensible people who are by no means stupid sometimes say things that would disgrace an idiot child. But Maria did not laugh.
‘The other night, after I had left you,’ she said, ‘there was some sort of demonstration in the Piazza di Venezia, and the carriage stopped a moment before turning another way. A man looked through the window, trying to see me in the dark. I could see him plainly under the electric light. It was a horrible face, flattened against the pane, and though I did not pay much attention to it at the time, it comes back to me and frightens me when I know that Leone is out in the streets with his tutor. Perhaps he is only going to have the mumps!’
She tried to laugh now.
‘A tutor is generally supposed to be a sufficient protection for a boy,’ observed Giuliana, not much impressed. ‘Yours is a good-sized man too, and Sigismondo always says that keeping order in a city depends on the delusion that big men are more dangerous than short men. At all events most people think they are, and your tutor looks like an ex-carabineer.’
‘I’m sure he is a coward,’ said Maria nervously. ‘He would think only of saving himself if there were any danger! I’m sure of it.’
‘It’s all imagination, my dear,’ said the practical Marchesa. ‘Your love for the boy makes you fancy that all sorts of impossible things are going to happen to him.’