There came a tap at the door.
Hermione started up from the cushion against which she had pressed her head, and opened her eyes, instinctively laying her hand on Vere’s volume of Rossetti, and pretending to read it.
“Avanti!” she said.
The door opened and Gaspare appeared. Hermione felt an immediate sensation of comfort.
“Gaspare,” she said, “what is it? I thought you were in bed.”
“Ha bisogna Lei?” he said.
It was a most familiar phrase to Hermione. It had been often on Gaspare’s lips when he was a boy in Sicily, and she had always loved it, feeling as if it sprang from a nature pleasantly ready to do anything in her service. But to-night it had an almost startling appropriateness, breaking in as if in direct response to her gnawing hunger of the heart. As she looked at Gaspare, standing by the door in his dark-blue clothes, with an earnest expression on his strong, handsome face, she felt as if he must have come just then because he was conscious that she had so much need of help and consolation. And she could not answer “no” to his simple question.
“Come in, Gaspare,” she said, “and shut the door. I’m all alone. I should like to have a little talk with you.”
He obeyed her, shut the door gently, and came up to her with the comfortable confidence of one safe in his welcome, desired not merely as a servant but as a friend by his Padrona.
“Did you want to say anything particular, Gaspare?” Hermione asked him. “Here—take a cigarette.”