d she go up alone?

"Please show me the way," she said, deciding.

Fabiano preceded her up a dirty stone staircase, dark and full of
noises, till they came to the third floor.

"It is here, Signora!"

He knocked loudly on a door. It was opened very quickly, as if by some
one who was on the watch, expectant of an arrival.

"Chi e?" cried a female voice.

And, almost simultaneously, a woman appeared with eyes that stared in
inquiry.

By these eyes, their shape, and the long, level brows above them,
Hermione knew that this woman must be Ruffo's mother.

"Good-morning, Donna Maddalena," said Fabiano, heartily.

"Good-morning," said the woman, directing her eyes with a strange and
pertinacious scrutiny to Hermione, who stood behind him. "I thought
perhaps it was--"

She stopped. Behind, in the doorway, appeared the head of a young woman,
covered with blue-black hair, then the questioning face of an old woman
with a skin like yellow parchment.

"Don Antonio?"

She nodded, keeping her long, Arab eyes on Hermione.

"No. Are you expecting him so early?"

"He may come at any time. Chi lo sa?"

She shrugged her broad, graceless shoulders.

"It isn't he! It isn't Antonio!" bleated a pale and disappointed voice,
with a peculiarly irritating timbre.

It was the voice of the old woman, who now darted over Maddalena
Bernari's shoulder a hostile glance at Hermione.

"Madonna Santissima!" baaed the woman with the blue-black hair. "Perhaps
he will not be let out to-day!"

The old woman began to cry feebly, yet angrily.

"Courage, Madre Teresa!" said Fabiano. "Antonio will be here to-day for
a certainty. Every one knows it. His friends"--he raised a big brown
hand significantly--"his friends have managed well for him."

"Si! si! It is true!" said the black-haired woman, nodding her large
head, and gesticulating towards Madre Teresa. "He will be here to-day.
Antonio will be here."

They all stared at Hermione, suddenly forgetting their personal and
private affairs.

"Donna Maddalena," said Fabiano, "here is a signora who knows Ruffo. I
met her at the Mergellina, and she asked me to show her the way here."

"Ruffo is out," said Maddalena, always keeping her eyes on Hermione.

"May I come in and speak to you?" asked Hermione.

Maddalena looked doubtful, yet curious.

"My son is in the sea, Signora. He is bathing at the Marina."

Hermione thought of the brown body she had seen falling through the
shining ai