“No; I want to see you, signorina,” answered the young man, with much polite suavity, taking off his hat as he spoke.
“If you are come to say the same as before, Pietro Antonio, you may spare yourself the trouble,” said Lucia, clearly and firmly.
“Then you won’t let me come into your house, Lucia Ceprano?” asked the young man, with a sudden contraction of his thin-lipped mouth, and a look in his eyes not unlike that of an enraged tiger.
“The door is open, you can come in,” said Lucia, calmly, “and you can talk to my mother if you like;” and with that she left the room by the back-door, and went out into the little garden which was fenced round with aloe bushes.
Meantime Pietro stepped into the cottage, and throwing his hat upon the table, sat down opposite the old woman, saying, “You don’t seem to have made much progress, Mother Ceprano.”
“You can see for yourself,”said she, in a low voice.
“Then she will soon be off to Rome, and you will have to work like the rest,” said the young man, without any apparent malice, “for everything here belongs to her. It was her father’s property, I know, and settled on her.”
“She will let me have it,”said the old woman, dejectedly.
“But she won’t go on doing all the work for you! She works for you both now; and then there’s the interest of her money; of course she will want that for herself when she is in Rome,” continued the young man, casting a sharp sidelong glance at the old woman as he spoke. “Yes, your comfortable, easy-going life will be quite at an end, mother, unless—but perhaps she is going to take you with her?” inquired Pietro, in a tone of much sympathy.
“I’m sure I don’t know; but she was saying only this very day again that go she would, and I believe she will.”