‘What is it?’ she said. ‘Why are you up so early? I am not ill, am I!’ and looked at her with a kind of menace, forbidding, as it were, any reference to what was past.
‘I hope not, dear,’ said Mrs. Anderson. ‘You have too much courage and good sense, my darling, to be ill.’
‘Do courage and good sense keep one from being ill?’ said Ombra, with something like a sneer; and then she said, ‘Please, mamma, go away. I want to get up.’
‘Not yet, dear. Keep still a little longer. You are not able to get up yet,’ said poor Mrs. Anderson, trembling for the news which would meet her when she came into the outer world again. What strange change was it that had come upon Ombra? She looked almost derisively, almost threateningly into her mother’s face.
‘One would think I had had a fever, or that some great misfortune had happened to me,’ she said; ‘but I am not aware of it. Leave me alone, please. I have a thousand things to do. I want to get up. Mother, for heaven’s sake, don’t look at me so! You will drive me wild! My nerves cannot stand it; nor—nor my temper,’ said Ombra, with a shrill in her voice which had never been heard there before. ‘Mamma, if you have any pity, go away.’
‘If my lady will permit, I will attend Mees Ombra,’ said old Francesca, coming in with a look of ominous significance. And poor Mrs. Anderson was worn out—she had been up half the night, and during the other half she did not sleep, though Ombra slept, who was the chief sufferer. Vanquished now by her daughter’s unfilial looks, she stole away, and cried by herself for a few moments in a corner, which did her good, and relieved her heart.
But Francesca advanced to the bedside with intentions far different from any her mistress had divined. She approached Ombra solemnly, holding out two fingers at her.
‘I make the horns,’ said Francesca; ‘I advance not to you again, Mademoiselle, without making the horns. Either you are an ice-maiden, as I said, and make enchantments, or you have the evil eye——’
‘Oh! be quiet, please, and leave me alone. I want to get up. I don’t want to be talked to. Mamma leaves me when I ask her, and why should not you?’
‘Because, Mademoiselle,’ said Francesca, with elaborate politeness, ‘my lady has fear of grieving her child; but for me I have not fear. Figure to yourself that I have made you like the child of my bosom for eighteen—nineteen year—and shall I stand by now, and see you drive love from you, drive life from you? You think so, perhaps? No, I am bolder than my dear padrona. I do not care sixpence if I break your heart. You are ice, you are stone, you are worse than all the winters and the frosts! Signorina Ghiaccia, you haf done it now!’