Then he poured out more brandy in the teaspoon for Bianca Maria to take. Don Carlo Cavalcanti's face twitched. He leant over the bed, and asked:
'What did you see? Tell me—what did you see?'
The daughter did not answer. She looked at her father in such sad surprise that the doctor, turning round, noticed it and frowned. He had not heard what the father asked his daughter, and he again felt the great family secret coming up, seeing Bianca Maria's gentle, sad glance.
'Don't ask her anything,' the doctor said brusquely to the Marquis di Formosa.
The old patrician restrained a disdainful shrug. He brooded over his daughter's face, as if he wanted to get the secret out by magnetism. She lowered her eyelids, but suffering was in her face; then she looked at the doctor, as if she wanted help.
'Do you want anything?' he asked.
'There is a man at my door: make him go away,' she whispered in a frightened tone.
The doctor started; so did her father. In fact, outside the door, in his invariable wretched waiting attitude, was Pasqualino De Feo, dirty, ragged, with unkempt beard and pale, streaky red cheeks. The Marquis had left him in the drawing-room, but he slid along to Bianca Maria's room with the timid, quiet step of a beggar who fears to be chased from all doors.
'Who is that man?' said the doctor in that rough tone of his, going up to the door, as if to chase him away.
'He is a friend,' the Marquis answered, hurrying forward in a vague, embarrassed way.