"Perhaps."
"Visiting friends?"
"Exactly." Aliandro nodded. "They are visiting friends in Messina."
"I wish I had known; I just came from there. Will they return soon?" Blake's hopes had been so high, his disappointment was so keen, that he failed to notice the old man's lack of greeting and his crafty leer as he answered:
"Si, veramente! Soon, very soon. Within a year—five years, at the outside."
"What?"
"Oh, they will return so soon as it pleases them." He chuckled as if delighted at his own secrecy.
Norvin said sharply: "Come, come! Don't jest with me. I have traveled a long way to see them. I wish to know their whereabouts."
"Then ask some one who knows. If ever I was told, I have forgotten,
Si'or. My memory goes jumping about like a kid. It is the rheumatism."
After an instant more, he queried, "You are perhaps a friend of that
thrice-blessed angel, my padrona?"
With an exclamation of relief Norvin laid a hand upon the old fellow's shoulder and shook him gently.