“She is at the mill, dear cousin,” answered Serafina.
“What mill?”
“The straw mill, where she is a plaiter.”
“Let her leave it and come to me.”
“But she gains ten soldi a day. How shall we live if we give up our work?”
“I will make up the ten soldi. Bid her come.”
So the next dawn did not find Marianna hastening with lunch hamper down the path through the fir thicket toward the mill in the gorge. But Armando was at the spot where he met her every morning on her way to work. And while he watched and worried under the alders, whose boles the torrent splashed, Marianna stood at the bedside of Aunt Carolina. At daybreak she had entered the room softly, and found the woman from America awake.
“I have been waiting for you,” she said faintly. “In the night I remembered a packet that Bertino gave me for some one in Cardinali—a Signor Corrini. It is there, in the bag. Take it out, and deliver it to whom it belongs.”
“Signor Corrini! Armando!” cried the girl. “I will carry it to him at once.” She started for the door.
“Armando is your amante?”