But Donna Elisa could not believe that God and the saints wished to aid her sister-in-law.
She had watched her since the festival of San Sebastiano. Whenever any one spoke of Gaetano, she turned pale, and looked very troubled. Her features became like those of a sinful man, when he is racked with the pangs of conscience.
Donna Elisa sat and thought of it one morning, and it was so engrossing that she let her needle rest. “Donna Micaela is no Etna woman,” she said to herself. “She is on the side of the government; she is glad that Gaetano is in prison.”
Out in the street at that same moment people came carrying a great stretcher. On it lay heaped up a mass of church ornaments; chandeliers and shrines and reliquaries. Donna Elisa looked up for a moment, then returned to her thoughts.
“She would not let me adorn the house of the Alagonas on the festival of San Sebastiano,” she thought. “She did not wish the saint to help Gaetano.”
Two men came by dragging a rattling dray on which lay a mountain of red hangings, richly embroidered stoles, and altar pictures in broad, gilded frames.
Donna Elisa struck out with her hand as if to push away all doubts. It could not be an actual miracle which had happened. The saint must know that Diamante could not afford to build a railway.
People now came past driving a yellow cart, packed full of music-stands, prayer-books, praying-desks and confessionals.
Donna Elisa woke up. She looked out between the rosaries that hung in garlands over the window panes. That was the third load of church furnishings that had passed. Was Diamante being plundered? Had the Saracens come to the town?
She went to the door to see better. Again came a stretcher, and on it lay mourning-wreaths of tin, tablets with long inscriptions, and coats of arms, such as are hung up in churches in memory of the dead.