'No; my father's.'
She let him see she did not wish to speak about them, so he held his tongue. Another time, one Friday evening, Don Pasqualino De Feo came in, with his sickly look and torn, dirty clothes. At once the doctor remembered he had seen him. Yes, at the hospital, where he arrived black and blue, knocked about as if he had got a severe licking; and he remembered his fantastic talk. While the medium was whispering with the Marquis in a window recess, the doctor asked Bianca quietly:
'Is he a friend, too?' But he noticed she got so pale, her eyes so frightened, crushed by fear of something he knew nothing about, that he said no more. He remembered that, on recovering from her long faint, she had tried to send the medium out of the house. 'You dislike him, don't you?'
'No, no,' said she. 'I am foolish.'
She was afraid Amati would interrupt her father's conversation; but finding their talk prevented, they got up to go away. The medium went past with his eyes down, but Amati called out to him:
'You have got over that licking, De Feo?'
He started, rubbed his forehead, and answered, without looking at the doctor:
'I have had favour from him who sent me the misfortune.'
'From whom?' asked the doctor, with a mocking laugh.