'No, my lady, no,' the servant eagerly answered at once. 'There is lots of oil in the pantry. It was by the Marquis's orders I did not light the lamp.'
'Did he give you such an order?' she asked, amazed, arching her eyebrows.
'Yes, my lady.'
'For what reason?'
But she regretted the question at once. It seemed to fail in the profound respect she owed her father. Still, the word had rushed out. She would have liked to go away and not hear the answer, whatever it was; but she feared to make matters worse, and listened with open eyes, ready to restrain her astonishment and fear.
'The Marquis is in a rage with Jesus Christ,' the servant said, in that humble but familiar tone in which the common folk in Naples often speak of the Deity. 'Last Saturday he asked a great favour of that miracle-working Ecce Homo, but he did not get it. Then the Marquis gave orders the lamp was not to be lighted again.'
'Did the Marquis tell you that?'
'Yes, my lady; but if you like, I will go and light it.'
'Obey the Marquis,' she murmured coldly, as she went on towards the drawing-room.
As she wandered about alone in the spacious room, ill-lighted by a petroleum-lamp, she searched for her work-basket and could not find it, though she passed it twenty times without seeing it. She still bitterly repented having asked the servant that question, since throughout the ever-increasing family decay what most embittered her was to be obliged to judge her father before servants or strangers. It was in vain she shut her eyes so as not to see, that she spent her days in her room, the chapel, and the Sacramentiste convent where her aunt was; in vain she kept silence, trying not to hear what others said: Margherita, who was the maid, and Giovanni's wife's remarks, her aunt the nun's uneasy questions, and the hints of some old relations who came to see her now and then; they spoke so pityingly, it brought tears to her eyes. She had to lower her eyes, for she could not help judging her father inwardly as they shook their heads, pitying her. What shook her most throughout the financial difficulties she vainly tried to hide in that decent poverty that could not be kept secret much longer were her father's unexpected, vexatious, often wild, eccentricities.