le and unsettled. No sane person could believe the monstrous
things he had told her.

Outside, he made a few steps and then stopped Elettra, laying his
emaciated hand upon her shoulder. He looked behind him and saw that they
were alone in the passage.

"Take care of your mistress, my daughter," he said. "Naples is not Muro,
but it is no better. Let her eat what others eat, drink what others
drink, and take no medicines except from you, and make her lock her door
at night. This is not a good house."

The dark woman looked at him fixedly for several seconds, and then
nodded twice.

"It is well that you have told me, Father Curate," she said in a low
voice. "I understand."

That was all, and she turned to lead him out.

CHAPTER XII.

After that, Elettra, unknown to Veronica, slept in the dressing-room
every night. After her mistress had gone to bed in the inner chamber,
the woman used to lock the outer door softly and then draw a short,
light sofa across it; on this she lay as best she might. The nights were
cold, after the fire had gone out, and she covered herself with a cloak
of Veronica's. In itself, it was no great hardship for a tough woman of
the mountains, as she was. But she slept little, for she feared
something. In the small hours she often thought she heard some one
breathing on the other side of the door, close to the lock, and once she
was quite sure that a single ray of light flashed through the keyhole,
below the half-turned key. Yet this might have been her imagination. And
as for the breathing, there was a large Maltese cat in the house that
sometimes wandered about at night. It might be purring all alone
outside, in the dark, and she might have taken the sound for that of
human breathing. No people are more suspicious and imaginative than
Italians, when they have been warned that there is danger; and this does
not proceed from natural timidity, but from the enormous value they set
upon life itself, as a good possession.

As for what Veronica ate and drank, Elettra was wise, too. She felt sure
that if any attempt were made to poison her, Matilde would manage it
quite alone; and she seriously expected that such an attempt would be
made, after what Don Teodoro had told her. Veronica, like most Italians
in the south, never took any regular breakfast, beyond a cup of coffee,
or tea, or chocolate, with a bit of bread or a biscuit, as soon as she
awoke. It was easy to be sure that such simple