“You will tell Mariagrazia how sorry I am for her. What is she going to do?”
“She is going to service in Naples, poor woman. Did Pepe Guardino go to Naples?”
“Yes, he came.”
“Then he must have given you the message about the millstone that split. Have I told you all? Yes, it seems to me that I have. No; I was forgetting the best. One day that she was dusting, Carmela found a paper, with writing, under the clock. She always meant to put it in an envelope and send it you, Signorina. Then, as I had to go to Naples, I said, 'I will take it to the Signora myself.’ Shall I go and fetch it?”
“Go,” she said.
A slight expression of fatigue came over her face, the heavy lids dropped for want of rest. The warmth from the grate had overcome the sensation of cold. She tried to shake off the torpor. Matteo returned, carrying a sheet of foreign letter-paper, folded into microscopic compass.
“As neither Carmela nor I can read, your fate might have been written here, and we should have been none the wiser.”
She opened the sheet and read it. Its perusal made no visible impression on her. She put it in her pocket.
“It is a list of certain things that I had forgotten. You can go to bed, Matteo.”
“There is nothing I can do for you?”