idea that old
Giorgio would choose that part of the house for a refuge.

His voice had penetrated to them, sounding breathlessly hurried: "Hola!
Vecchio! O, Vecchio! Is it all well with you in there?"

"You see--" murmured old Viola to his wife. Signora Teresa was silent
now. Outside Nostromo laughed.

"I can hear the padrona is not dead."

"You have done your best to kill me with fear," cried Signora Teresa.
She wanted to say something more, but her voice failed her.

Linda raised her eyes to her face for a moment, but old Giorgio shouted
apologetically--

"She is a little upset."

Outside Nostromo shouted back with another laugh--

"She cannot upset me."

Signora Teresa found her voice.

"It is what I say. You have no heart--and you have no conscience, Gian'
Battista--"

They heard him wheel his horse away from the shutters. The party he led
were babbling excitedly in Italian and Spanish, inciting each other to
the pursuit. He put himself at their head, crying, "Avanti!"

"He has not stopped very long with us. There is no praise from strangers
to be got here," Signora Teresa said tragically. "Avanti! Yes! That is
all he cares for. To be first somewhere--somehow--to be first with these
English. They will be showing him to everybody. 'This is our Nostromo!'"
She laughed ominously. "What a name! What is that? Nostromo? He would
take a name that is properly no word from them."

Meantime Giorgio, with tranquil movements, had been unfastening the
door; the flood of light fell on Signora Teresa, with her two girls
gathered to her side, a picturesque woman in a pose of maternal
exaltation. Behind her the wall was dazzlingly white, and the crude
colours of the Garibaldi lithograph paled in the sunshine.

Old Viola, at the door, moved his arm upwards as if referring all his
quick, fleeting thoughts to the picture of his old chief on the wall.
Even when he was cooking for the "Signori Inglesi"--the engineers (he
was a famous cook, though the kitchen was a dark place)--he was, as
it were, under the eye of the great man who had led him in a glorious
struggle where, under the walls of Gaeta, tyranny would have expired
for ever had it not been for that accursed Piedmontese race of kings
and ministers. When sometimes a frying-pan caught fire during a delicate
operation with some shredded onions, and the old man was seen backing
out of the doorway, swearing and coughing violently in an acrid cloud
of smoke, the name