“If Your Excellency is going to wait, I will wait too.”
“No, the master will not return.”
“Ah,” said the other, lowering her eyes, and after saying good-night she left.
At last Donna Maria arose and rapidly passed into the salotto, another room where she had placed her books, pictures, and writing-table, and where she used to pass the morning when she did not go out, and quickly entered the bedroom. A night-light was burning there subduedly, and a fresh fragrance impregnated the air. Everything was there in the familiar and caressing half-light. Like a shadow Donna Maria walked up and down her room, without stopping or touching anything, as if she were looking for something and really did not care to look for it.
She trembled, and sometimes stopped as if at the noise of steps.
With its counterpane of old flowered brocade, fringed with gold lace and turned down, the bed was made and glistened whitely with its sheets and lace.
All at once she discovered what she wanted. Her expert hands opened the drawer of a little inlaid cabinet near the bed, and fumbled there till she found and drew out a small object. It was a little diary, but she was unable to read the small pages as she turned them over. She came nearer the night-light and, finding the page, read thereon. Of a sudden a great cry escaped her breast, and, kneeling by the bed, she embraced the pillows convulsively.
“It is ten days ago—ten days!”
A hundred times with a hundred sighs, in a torrent of tears like one demented, she repeated the words in tones of anger, fear, and lament. She said the words with a desolation and sadness, and an immense melancholy. Then she murmured them more softly, and even stammered them. At last she was silent; her tears ceased. Then she fell, wearied out, into a heavy, dreamless sleep.