“Why not?”
“Of course, there is no reason. What surprised me rather”—she was speaking more slowly now, and more unevenly—“was this—”
“Si?”
Gaspare’s voice was loud. He lifted up his hands and laid them heavily on his knees.
“Si?” he repeated.
“After you had spoken with her, she cried, Ruffo’s mother cried, Gaspare. And she said, ‘To think of its being Gaspare on the island!’”
“Is that all?”
“No.”
A look that was surely a look of fear came into his face, rendering it new to Hermione. Never before had she seen such an expression—or had she once—long ago—one night in Sicily?
“That isn’t all. Ruffo took his mother home, and when they got home she said to him this, ‘Has Gaspare ever said you were like somebody?’”