286“I’m so uneasy I don’t know what to do. That boy is much sicker than he knows,” she went on to justify her disquietude, “and he’s in a bad mood for getting well. I don’t believe Italian doctors know much, anyhow. I’ve heard that they still put leeches on you. All he has to take care of him, day and night, is that old servant-woman What’s-her-name, who, he told me himself, doctors him with herb-tea. I’m so uneasy! The sort of cold he has, I tell you, can turn any minute into something you don’t want. He’s all run down and a bad subject for pneumonia. I’m thinking I shall have to just go to the door and find out how he is.”
“You could send a servant to inquire,” suggested Estelle.
Aurora appeared to reflect; she might have been trying to find a reason for not taking the hint, but she said, “No; I should feel better satisfied to go myself.”
At the last moment, when they were ready to start, Estelle found Busteretto’s nose hot, and decided not to go. She stayed at home and called a doctor. For some days the pet had not seemed to her in quite his usual form.
Aurora, climbing Gerald’s stairs this time, felt very uncertain and rather small. The street door, when she had pulled the bell-handle, had unlatched with a click, but no voice had called down, and when she reached the top landing the door in front of her stood forbiddingly closed. She waited for some minutes, wondering whether she were doing right. Suppose Gerald were enough better to be up again and, Giovanna being out, should himself come to open the door. How would she feel, caught slinking back, after she had been requested loudly and roundly to stay away?
287Well, set aside how she felt, the object of her coming would have been reached, wouldn’t it? She would know that he was better. She rang and listened.
Certain, as soon as she heard them, whose footsteps were on the other side of the door, she held in readiness her Italian. She counted on understanding Giovanna’s answer to her question, for she had, as she boasted, “quite a vocabulary.” But much more than to this she trusted to the talent which Italians have for making their meaning clear through pantomime and facial expression.
As soon, in fact, as Giovanna opened the door, and before the woman had said a word in reply to “Come sta Signor Fane?” Aurora had understood.
Giovanna’s eyes, stained with recent weeping, looked up at the visitor without severity or aversion, seeking for sympathy; the unintelligible account she gave of her master’s condition was broken up with sighs.
Aurora felt her heart turn cold, and such agitation seize her as made her reckless of all but one thing.