“To the station to meet a man.”
“I will walk with you,” she said, turning to cross the sunny piazza by his side. “Those people do not want me.”
“No,” said Cesare bitterly. “They pay for what they do not want, so that we who want have nothing with which to pay. And your priests tell you that is right!”
“Do not let us talk of the priests,” said the girl, hastily crossing herself unseen to him. Acts were not much, but it always frightened her to hear him speak against religion. To get him away from this subject she was ready to invent freely. “I have been with that Nina—over there,” and she flung her dark head on one side in the direction from whence she had come, “and I have heard something.”
“Ah!” The “Ah” was greedy. He had brooded over Wilbraham’s high-handedness until he had come to see in him a representative of the injustices which he maintained society had inflicted upon him, and he hated the Englishman with a hatred out of all proportion with his wrongs.
“She is a poor idiot,” Peppina went on contemptuously, “without ideas. But she talks.”
Cesare nodded. If any one had noticed they might have observed that he never now flung out a word against women.
“She talks of her angels. They are all angels with her. And I think they are going away. Not now, but later. I believe it will be to Naples or Sicily.”
“Good!” he cried, and her heart gave a leap of delight at seeing his eyes brighten. The next moment he turned on her. “You did not tell her it was I who wanted to know?”
“Altro!” exclaimed the girl indignantly. “Am I a fool? I did not even ask the question myself. I tell you she talks. But you are pleased, dear one?” she went on, her voice changing into deep tenderness.