But Candia remained standing. Her beak-like nose was inflated with anger, and her wrinkled cheeks quivered curiously. “Tell me, Don Silla.”
“You went yesterday to take back the wash to Donna Cristina Lamonica?”
“Well, and what of it? What of it? Was there anything missing? All of it counted, piece by piece—and not a thing missing. What’s the matter with it now?”
“Wait a moment, my daughter! In the same room there was the table silver—”
Candia, comprehending, turned like an angry hawk, about to swoop upon its prey. Her thin lips twitched convulsively.
“The silver was in the room, and Donna Cristina found that a spoon was missing. Do you understand, my daughter? Could you have taken it—by mistake?”
Candia jumped like a grasshopper before the injustice of this accusation. As a matter of fact she had stolen nothing.
“Oh, it was I, was it? I? Who says so? Who saw me? I am astonished at you, Don Silla! I am astonished at you! I, a thief? I? I?”
And there was no end to her indignation. She was all the more keenly stung by the unjust charge, because she knew herself to be capable of the action they attributed to her.
“Then it was you who took it?” interrupted Don Silla, prudently sinking back into the depths of his spacious judicial chair.