“You have done your best to kill me with fear,” cried Signora Teresa. She wanted to say something more, but her voice failed her.
Linda raised her eyes to her face for a moment, but old Giorgio shouted apologetically—
“She is a little upset.”
Outside Nostromo shouted back with another laugh—
“She cannot upset me.”
Signora Teresa found her voice.
“It is what I say. You have no heart—and you have no conscience, Gian’ Battista—”
They heard him wheel his horse away from the shutters. The party he led were babbling excitedly in Italian and Spanish, inciting each other to the pursuit. He put himself at their head, crying, “Avanti!”
“He has not stopped very long with us. There is no praise from strangers to be got here,” Signora Teresa said tragically. “Avanti! Yes! That is all he cares for. To be first somewhere—somehow—to be first with these English. They will be showing him to everybody. ‘This is our Nostromo!’” She laughed ominously. “What a name! What is that? Nostromo? He would take a name that is properly no word from them.”
Meantime Giorgio, with tranquil movements, had been unfastening the door; the flood of light fell on Signora Teresa, with her two girls gathered to her side, a picturesque woman in a pose of maternal exaltation. Behind her the wall was dazzlingly white, and the crude colours of the Garibaldi lithograph paled in the sunshine.