t know anything bad of Ruffo."

"I felt sure not. Don't you like his coming to the island?"

Gaspare's face was still flushed.

"Signora, it is nothing to do with me."

A sort of dull anger seemed to be creeping into his voice, an accent
of defiance that he was trying to control. Hermione noticed it, and it
brought her to a resolve that, till now, she had avoided. Her secret
fear had prompted her to delay, to a gradual method of arriving at
the truth. Now she sat forward, clasping her hands together hard, and
speaking quickly:

"Gaspare, I feel sure that you noticed long ago something very strange
in Ruffo. Perhaps you noticed it almost at once. I believe you did. It
is this. Ruffo has an extraordinary look in his face sometimes, a look
of--of your dead Padrone. I didn't see it for some time, but I think you
saw it directly. Did you? Did you, Gaspare?"

There was no answer. Gaspare only cleared his throat again more
violently. Hermione waited for a minute. Then, understanding that he was
not going to answer, she went on:

"You have seen it--we have both noticed it. Now I want to tell you
something--something that happened to-night."

Gaspare started, looked up quickly, darted at his Padrona a searching
glance of inquiry.

"What is it?" she said.

"Niente!"

He kept his eyes on her, staring with a tremendous directness that was
essentially southern. And she returned his gaze.

"I was with Ruffo this evening. We talked, and he told me that he met
you at the Festa last night. He told me, too, that he was with his
mother."

She waited to give him a chance of speaking, of forestalling any
question. But he only stared at her with dilated eyes.

"He told me that you knew his mother, and that his mother knew you."

"Why not?"

"Of course, there is no reason. What surprised me rather"--she was
speaking more slowly now, and more unevenly--"was this--"

"Si?"

Gaspare's voice was loud. He lifted up his hands and laid them heavily
on his knees.

"Si?" he repeated.

"After you had spoken with her, she cried, Ruffo's mother cried,
Gaspare. And she said, 'To think of its being Gaspare on the island!'"

"Is that all?"

"No."

A look that was surely a look of fear came into his face, rendering it
new to Hermione. Never before had she seen such an expression--or had
she once--long ago--one night in Sicily?

"That isn't all. Ruffo took his mother home, and when they got home she
said to him this, 'Has Gas