'Bloodlessness and languor. She faded away ... at the last, she was not in her senses all the time.'
'Did she rave?'
'Yes, slightly,' she answered, blushing to her forehead.
'Don't think of that,' he said, guessing the reason of her blush.
'My father felt mother's sufferings so much! For years a dream had taken hold of him: it was to build up the Cavalcanti fortune, to let mother and me live in style, keep open house, and in one day pour out in charity what now serves to keep us for a year,' she added, with a lump in her throat.
'Keep calm, dear-don't get excited.'
'No, no, let me speak; if I don't I'll choke. A great dream, as large as his heart, noble and generous as his soul, so much so that my mother and I felt gratitude that will not end with life, but must go on beyond the tomb, where one still hears, loves, and prays. But, with his excited fancy, he longed for quick, ample methods of realizing this fortune: methods suited to the case, for a Cavalcanti neither works nor speculates ...'
'It was the lottery,' Amati finished up for her.
'Yes, the lottery; how do you know?'
'I do know.'