“Ma si! All Naples knows.”
The old woman’s face became terrible. Her two hands shot up, dropped, shot up again, imprecating, cursing the world, the sky, the whole scheme of the universe, it seemed. She chattered like an ape. Artois soothed her with a ten-lire note.
That night, when he went back to the hotel, he had heard the aunt’s version of Peppina, and knew—that which really he had known before—that Hermione had taken her to live on the island.
Hermione! What was she? An original, clever and blind, great-hearted and unwise. An enthusiast, one created to be carried away.
Never would she grow really old, never surely would the primal fires within her die down into the gray ashes that litter so many of the hearths by which age sits, a bleak, uncomely shadow.
And Peppina was on the island, a girl from the stews of Naples; not wicked, perhaps, rather wronged, injured by life—nevertheless, the niece of that horror of the Galleria.
He thought of Vere and shuddered.
Next day towards four o’clock the Marchesino strolled into Artois’ room, with a peculiarly impudent look of knowledge upon his face.
“Buon giorno, Caro Emilio,” he said. “Are you busy?”
“Not specially.”