"Yes."
Sabina turned her eyes a little, but did not look straight at him. She saw, however, that he was still watching the people in the room, and still looked bored, and she was quite unprepared for what followed.
"Are the affairs of your family finally settled?" he enquired, without changing his tone.
Sabina was so much surprised that she waited a moment before answering. Her first instinct was to ask him stiffly why he put such a question, and she would have replied to it in that way if it had come from any other guest in the room; but she changed her mind almost instantly.
"No one has told me anything," she said simply, in a low voice. Malipieri turned his head a little with a quick movement, and clasped his brown hands over one knee.
"You know nothing?" he asked. "Nothing whatever about the matter?"
"Nothing."
He bit his lip as if he were indignant, and were repressing an exclamation.
"No one has written to me—for a long time," Sabina said, after a moment.
She had been on the point of saying that she had never received a line from any member of her family since the crash, but that seemed to sound like a confidence, and what she really said was quite true.