“You said you were going away,” she cried. “You said it, when you left us yesterday. It can’t be! it shan’t be! You’re not going to leave Carmina, too?”
Ovid’s first impulse was to tell the whole truth. He resisted the impulse. To own that Carmina was the cause of his abandonment of the sea-voyage, before she was even sure of the impression she had produced on him, would be to place himself in a position from which his self-respect recoiled. “My plans are changed,” was all he said to Teresa. “Make your mind easy; I’m not going away.”
The strange old creature snapped her fingers joyously. “Good-bye! I want no more of you.” With those cool and candid words of farewell, she advanced to the door—stopped suddenly to think—and came back. Only a moment had passed, and she was as sternly in earnest again as ever.
“May I call you by your name?” she asked.
“Certainly!”
“Listen, Ovid! I may not see you again before I go back to my husband. This is my last word—never forget it. Even Carmina may have enemies!”
What could she be thinking of? “Enemies—in my mother’s house!” Ovid exclaimed. “What can you possibly mean?”
Teresa returned to the door, and only answered him when she had opened it to go.
“The Evil Eye never lies,” she said. “Wait—and you will see.”