"No. You must stay with the signora."
"I want to come with you."
His great eyes were fastened on his padrone's face.
"I have always been with you."
"But you were with the signora first. You were her servant. You must stay with her now. Remember one thing, Gaspare—the signora is never to know."
The boy nodded. His eyes still held Maurice. They glittered as if with leaping fires. That deep and passionate spirit of Sicilian loyalty, which is almost savage in its intensity and heedless of danger, which is ready to go to hell with, or for, a friend or a master who is beloved and believed in, was awake in Gaspare, illuminated him at this moment. The peasant boy looked noble.
"Mayn't I come with you, signorino?"
"Gaspare," Maurice said, "I must leave some one with the padrona. Salvatore might come still. I may miss him going down. Whom can I trust to stop Salvatore, if he comes, but you? You see?"
"Va bene, signorino."
The boy seemed convinced, but he suffered and did not try to conceal it.