'How is Lady Bianca Maria?'
'Not very well,' the old woman said, with a sigh.
In a few minutes the victoria bore easy, contented Don Gennaro Parascandolo to the Carracciolo promenade, where all his debtors, past, present, and future, greeted him with smiles and raised hats; and he smiled and bowed in return.
CHAPTER VIII
IN DON CRESCENZIO'S LOTTERY-SHOP
Donna Bianca Maria Cavalcanti read that letter over eight or ten times before putting it in her pocket. She was working at her lace alone in the bare large room, thinking over what was in it, for she knew the words by heart already. She saw it before her eyes, going over its meaning in her mind. So the slender bobbins slipped from her hands while she dreamt.
The letter was honest and frank. It said that, as a doctor and friend, he once more advised her to leave that lonely old house where she just vegetated. He begged she would deign to accept a humble, plain offer of hospitality in the country, in the village and home he was born in, where his mother lived alone piously. Donna Bianca Maria Cavalcanti should not despise this offer so frankly made. She could go down there with Margherita. The air was good, the country around fresh and green; it was an agreeable solitude. Dr. Amati could not go because of his work; but his mother would be sure to be very fond of her. She would be quite cured down there in that lifegiving, bright air. He implored her tenderly not to say 'No,' to believe in his devotion. He could not hide the real state of her health from her. Travel and country air were necessaries of life to her.
So the great doctor wrote in that short, precise style of his, honest, like his face and voice; a deep, sincere vein of feeling ran through each phrase. Feeling this, Bianca Maria shut her eyes to keep down her emotion. When Margherita brought her the letter, she guessed at once who it came from on seeing the clear, straight, precise writing. She opened it quickly, without hesitation or false modesty. After reading it, a country landscape, poor and humble, but bright and perfumed with green, rose before her eyes with the sweetness of an idyll; a flow of heat enlivened the slow blood in her veins; a desire for life and happiness gnawed at her heart; a first rush of youthful eagerness came. Antonio Amati's letter, read so often, was fixed in her mind. As she thought it over that fresh Friday evening in March, the blood rushed to her heart and her eyes filled with tears.
The Marquis di Formosa came in that evening, about eight o'clock. He also was more excited than usual, with a quiver in his limbs and features, which he got every week on Friday evening, as if he shortly expected a great sorrow or a great joy. But his daughter took no heed at first. She was distrait; though she went on working mechanically, the good, decided words of the letter that begged her to save herself buzzed in her mind, delightfully disturbing.