. The people will make a feast when
you come. It will amuse you. Excellency, let us go."

Veronica laughed sleepily.

"You are dreaming, Elettra. Go away. I want to go to sleep."

The woman sighed softly, extinguished the light, and groped her way to
the door in the dark. Veronica was very sleepy, as she said, but somehow
after her maid had gone away, she became wakeful again for a time. The
cat had remained on the foot of the bed, and its soft purring disturbed
her a little, because she was accustomed to absolute silence. There had
been a curious cross-fitting of her dream and of the little realities of
Elettra's entrance. She had dreamt over again the priest's earnest
warning that her life was in danger, and she had imagined that she heard
a footstep of a person coming up quickly behind her. Then, somehow, in
the same instant, recalling what Don Teodoro had told her about her
uncle's frauds, she had seemed to know that he had refused the money in
the afternoon because there was no more to take, nor to be given to her.
Waking suddenly, she had heard Elettra's anxious voice, giving the
strong impression that she was really in present peril. Then she had
really thought that she heard another footstep, somewhere, while Elettra
was standing still beside her. It had only been the cat, of course. It
was such a very fat cat, as Elettra said, and the floors were of the
old-fashioned sort, laid on wooden beams, and trembled very easily, as
they do in old Italian houses. But each detail had fitted with another,
into a sort of whole which was a reflexion of the priest's story. Some
of it all at once looked true, and instead of going to sleep at once,
Veronica's eyes were wide open, and she turned uneasily on her pillow.

Of course, it was absurd, for she had received the money when she had
insisted upon having it, and if Elettra's room was damp, that quite
explained her presence. Besides, Elettra could not be supposed to know
what Don Teodoro had said to Veronica. And then, there was the rest of
the story, all that connected Bosio and Matilde. She absolutely refused
to think of believing that. She would not even admit that there might
have been some little foundation for it in the past.

Instinctively driving away the thought, she began to say certain prayers
for the poor man, and little by little, repeating the words often, her
mind grew calm, and she fell asleep once more. Yet in her sleep the
needle of doubt ran through th