"Go back to bed, Mariuccia," said the girl, "I will see who it is. The padrone is in his study. I had better ask him if he wishes to see any visitors."
She went quickly down the passage, pausing to put her head in at the study door. The Professor had grown older too, and bent more closely over his book than of yore. Not risking speech, Giannella looked a question as he raised his head; he nodded assent, and then the bell began its crazy dance again. Giannella hastily opened the front door and found herself face to face with a short, rather stout man, whose features she could not discern in the gloom, but who asked in an imperious tone whether the distintissimo Professor were at home. At the same time he handed her a card, from which she decided that this must be his first visit to the house.
"Favorisca," she murmured, and the stout gentleman followed her to Bianchi's room. She saw the Professor rise and come forward with a puzzled air, and heard the visitor begin an apology for his intrusion. Then she closed the door on them and went back to the kitchen, not sufficiently interested even to glance at the card, which she dropped on the little table beside the umbrella-stand in the passage.
"Is he never going, then, this cataplasm of a visitor?" exclaimed Mariuccia an hour later. "The padrone's supper is ready and spoiling. Take in the lamp, Giannella. They must be in the dark in there."
When Giannella entered the study, lamp in hand, she found that Bianchi had lighted a candle and was examining some papers, which he laid down quickly on seeing her. His sallow cheeks were flushed, and as he glanced up it struck the girl that his eyes looked unusually bright.
Opposite to him, leaning back in an arm-chair, sat the visitor, whom the light revealed as a youngish man with narrow black eyes and a round countenance, evidently intended for smiles, but disciplined just now into a kind of judicial severity which could not altogether suppress the under element of amusement with which he was regarding his host.
He too glanced quickly up at the girl who stood in the doorway, the lamp she carried illuminating her fair hair and grave young face. After a moment's hesitation she advanced and set the lamp on the table between the two men. Bianchi dropped his hands over the papers and looked across to his guest.
"This is Giannella Brockmann, Signor' Avvocato," he said; "you perceive that she is alive and in good health."
The stranger rose to his feet and seemed about to speak, but the Professor raised a warning hand, and, turning to Giannella, dismissed her with a nod of the head. As she closed the door she heard him say hurriedly, "Later, later. Not at present—it is a nervous temperament."