'I shall call for help now, unless you let me go,' answered Francesco, with white lips. Tebaldo laughed savagely.
'What a coward you are!' he cried, giving his brother a final shake and then letting him go. 'And what a fool I am to care?' he added, laughing again.
'Brute!' exclaimed Francesco, adjusting his collar and smoothing his coat.
'I warned you,' retorted Tebaldo, watching him. 'And now I have warned you again,' he added. 'This is the second time. Are there no women in the world besides Aliandra Basili?'
'I knew her first,' objected the younger man, beginning to recover some courage.
'You knew her first? When she was a mere child in Randazzo,—when we went to her father about a lease, we both heard her singing,—but what has that to do with it? That was six years ago, and you have hardly seen her since.'
'How do you know?' asked Francesco, scornfully.
He had gradually edged past Tebaldo towards the open end of the passage.
'How do you know that I did not often see her alone before she went to Messina, and since then, too?' He smiled as he renewed the question.