Gaspare’s great eyes dropped before hers, and he stood looking on the floor. She saw a deep flush cover his brown skin.
“I am sure you have noticed it, Gaspare,” she said. “I can see you have. Why did you not tell me?”
At that moment she felt angry with herself and almost angry with him. Had he noticed this strange, this subtle resemblance between the fisher-boy and the dead man at once, long before she had? Had he been swifter to see such a thing than she?
“What do you mean, Signora? What are you talking about?”
He looked ugly.
“How can a fisher-boy, a nothing from Mergellina, look like my Padrone?”
Now he lifted his eyes, and they were fierce—or so she thought.
“Signora, how can you say such a thing?”
“Gaspare?” she exclaimed, astonished at his sudden vehemence.
“Signora—scusi! But—but there will never be another like my Padrone.”