'Maria degli Angioli loves you. She knows you are unhappy; she would have told you everything, to help you. Why did you not ask her?' he went on in an excited voice, a storm of rage rising in it.
'What should I ask?' she repeated, still more frightened.
'You pretend not to understand!' he shouted, in a fury already. 'These women are all alike, a flock of sheep, silly and egotistical. What do you speak about by the hour together in the convent parlour? Whose death do you weep over? Think of the living! Don't you see the Cavalcanti family is going down to misery, dishonour, and death?'
'May God avert it!' she whispered, crossing herself devoutly.
'Women are selfish fools!' he shouted, enraged at her softness, at finding no resistance; 'and I who think of nothing else from morning till night, who kneel before the holy images morning and evening, for the preservation of the Cavalcanti! And you who, by asking your aunt the secrets of her dreams, could save me and the name by a word—you pretend not to understand! Ungrateful and treacherous, like all women!'
She put down her head and bit her lips, so as not to burst into sobs. Then, in a trembling voice, she replied:
'I'll ask her at some other time.'
'Ask her to-morrow,' her father retorted imperiously.
'I will do it to-morrow, then.'
Quickly his rage fell, suddenly calmed. He came up to her and touched her bent forehead, with his usual caress and blessing. Then, as if she could not help it, feeling her heart bursting, she began to cry silently.