When Gaetano rushed away, Donna Micaela stood for a long time in Donna Elisa’s garden. She stood there as if turned to stone, and could neither feel nor think.
Then suddenly the thought came that Gaetano and she were not alone in the world. She remembered her father lying sick, whom she had forgotten for so many hours.
She went through the gate of the court-yard out to the Corso, which lay deserted and empty. Tumult and shots were still audible far away, and she said to herself that they must be fighting down by Porta Etnea.
The moon shed its clear light on the façade of the summer-palace, and it amazed her that at such an hour, and on such a night, the balcony doors stood open, and the window shutters were not closed. She was still more surprised that the gate was standing ajar, and that the shop-door was wide open.
As she went in through the gate, she did not see the old gate-keeper, Piero, there. The lanterns in the court-yard were not lighted, and there was not a soul to be seen anywhere.
She went up the steps to the gallery, and her foot struck against something hard. It was a little bronze vase, which belonged in the music-room. A few steps higher up she found a knife. It was a sheath-knife, with a long, dagger-like blade. When she lifted it up a couple of dark drops rolled down from its edge. She knew that it must be blood.
And she understood too that what she had feared all the autumn had now happened. Bandits had been in the summer-palace for plunder. And everyone who could run away had run away; but her father, who could not leave his bed, must be murdered.
She could not tell whether the brigands were not still in the house. But now, in the midst of danger, her fears vanished; and she hurried on, unheeding that she was alone and defenceless.
She went along the gallery into the music-room. Broad rays of moonlight fell upon the floor, and in one of those rays lay a human form stretched motionless.
Donna Micaela bent down over that motionless body. It was Giannita. She was murdered; she had a deep, gaping wound in her neck.