“But this change of to-day is different,” he said, slowly. “Your mother has had a dreadful shock.”
“At Mergellina?”
“It must have been there.”
“But what could it be? We scarcely ever go there. We don’t know any one there—oh, except Ruffo.”
Her eyes, keen and bright with youth, even though they had been crying, were fixed upon his face while she was speaking, and she saw a sudden conscious look in his eyes, a movement of his lips—he drew them sharply together, as if seized by a spasm.
“Ruffo!” she repeated. “Has it something to do with Ruffo?”
There was a profound perplexity in her face, but the fear in it was less.
“Something to do with Ruffo?” she repeated.
Suddenly she moved, she got up. And all the fear had come back to her face, with something added to it, something intensely personal.
“Do you mean—is Ruffo dead?” she whispered.