ore him grew stronger with the physical weakness.
He was a coward always, but he was now half mad with fear. He laughed
hideously, and his face twitched. He sawed the air with extraordinary
gestures while he walked up and down in his wife's room, speaking
excitedly in a low tone. Matilde turned to the wall and answered
nothing. For she could not have found anything to say.

From time to time, during the day, she had news of Veronica. Elettra
never left her mistress but once, shortly before twelve o'clock. She
went out for a quarter of an hour, and came back bringing fresh eggs,
bread, and wine, which she had bought herself.

"It is poor fare, Excellency," she said, as she boiled the eggs in the
tea-urn, "but it is safe. If you are strong enough this afternoon, we
will go away. This is not a good house. I do not understand what was
done; but it was done to kill you and not to hurt them."

"I think it was," said Veronica. "I am not frightened, but I do not
think that I am safe here."

After she had eaten a little and drunk some wine, she felt stronger and
wrote a line to the Princess Corleone, asking the latter to receive her
for a few days, as she was in trouble. In an hour she had an answer.
Bianca, of course, was ready for her whenever she might come. Elettra
quickly began to pack such things as her mistress might need
immediately.

Veronica lay still, listening to Elettra's movements in the next room.
In a flash she had guessed half the truth, and reflexion now brought her
most of the rest. She remembered Don Teodoro's earnest face and the
quiet eyes that had looked at her through the silver spectacles while he
had been speaking. There had been conviction in them, and even then she
had felt that he believed the truth of what he said, however mistaken he
might be. And now she felt that it was not he who had spoken, but Bosio,
through him, that the warning came from beyond the grave, and that she
had risked her life in disregarding it. She believed that Bosio had been
a truthful man, and each detail of what had happened fitted itself to
the next, to make up the whole story which the priest had told her. All
but Bosio's love for Matilde, and in that Don Teodoro had misunderstood
him. He might have loved her in the past. That was possible, and to the
young girl's mind, in comparison with all that had recently happened,
the wrong of that love dwindled to an insignificant detail. She had not
been near enough to loving