“Value or not value, show it or not show it, mother, what does it matter?” exclaimed the young woman, leaving off her work, with an accent of weariness and fastidiousness. “All that won’t change mine and Marco’s fate.”
“Christians don’t believe in fate, Vittoria!” murmured Donna Arduina.
“Perhaps I’m a bad Christian as well,” she replied, with a feeble smile; “but I know my fate and Marco’s now, as if I were a gipsy, a sorceress, a witch.”
“Vittoria!”
“Take no notice, mother, I was joking,” concluded the daughter-in-law, lowering her eyes on her work.
But the mother-in-law did not wish to be silent; it seemed to her that the hour ought not to pass without a more intimate and intense explanation.
“Do you, then, know everything, Vittoria?” she asked slowly.
“How is one not to know it? Even living as a creature abandoned in a corner of a palace, as an insignificant creature in a corner of a drawing-room, there is always somebody to tell you everything, mother,” replied Vittoria bitterly and coldly.
“Some one has told you?”
“Some one? Several; many, in fact. My friends have hurried to let me know that Marco has taken a violent fancy for an actress. I know every particular, mother. The actress is a Milanese, has magnificent red hair, and is tall. She is called Gemma Dombrowska, a Russian name, not her own, but assumed from some great family over there.”