Costantino could see nothing, but he heard Aunt Bachissia stumbling her way towards him, moaning: "Costantino, Costantino!"
A wave of anger swept over him; he tried to cry out, to rise and fling himself upon her, choke her—but he was powerless. A cold sweat broke out all over him, and he knew that if he attempted so much as to speak, he would burst into tears. How hatefully weak he was!
Aunt Bachissia struck another match, and began searching for a light of some sort, but all she could find was a rude iron lamp hanging on a nail, with neither wick nor oil. Then she groped her way to the fireplace, and, stooping down, held out her hand with the lighted match between her fingers. There were the saucepan full of water, the heap of wet ashes, the soaked hearthstone, and beyond, half in the circle of light, the figure of Costantino extended motionless on the pallet. The match flared up and then went out, and all became again perfectly dark and silent.
For a moment Aunt Bachissia did not stir; she hardly seemed to breathe; then a long, choking sob broke from her.
Of what had she been thinking in that moment of silence and darkness? Did that vision of Costantino lying apparently dead before her awaken a sudden, agonising sense of what she had done; of her iniquitous responsibility in the ruin that had been wrought in Giovanna's and Costantino's lives, and in the lives of every one concerned in the melancholy drama? Throwing herself on the floor beside the pallet, she passed her hands tremblingly over his body and face, sobbing in the darkness and silence: "Costantino, Costantino! are you alive? Answer me——Yes," she murmured presently, "he is alive, but ill, ill—you are ill, aren't you?" she went on coaxingly. "Is it a wound? Ah, God! If you only knew what terrible things have happened! Giovanna sent me; she was frightened, you know; she thought you might have been hurt, that some one might have been lying in wait for you; she's more dead than alive herself—Costantino——!"
At last Costantino gave a moan; something hard in his breast seemed to melt; he was moved—affected. Then he was not forgotten, after all; Giovanna had been anxious; she had sent to find out about him; she was frightened, unhappy. Then, in his changed mood, Aunt Bachissia's words of a moment before came back to him with fresh meaning. "He is ill as well," she had said. Who was this other person who was ill? Again he thought of Giovanna, and his heart sank.
"Is it a wound?" she repeated.
"Yes," murmured Costantino.
"Who did it?"
"I don't know; some one hired by Aunt Martina Dejas."