"Signorino! Signorino! Are you ready?"
It was Gaspare's voice shouting vivaciously from the sunny terrace, where
Tito and another donkey, gayly caparisoned and decorated with flowers and
little streamers of colored ribbon, were waiting before the steps.
"Si, si! I'm coming in a moment!" replied Maurice's voice from the
bedroom.
Lucrezia stood by the wall looking very dismal. She longed to go to the
fair, and that made her sad. But there was also another reason for her
depression. Sebastiano was still away, and for many days he had not
written to her. This was bad enough. But there was something worse. News
had come to Marechiaro from a sailor of Messina, a friend of
Sebastiano's, that Sebastiano was lingering in the Lipari Isles because
he had found a girl there, a pretty girl called Teodora Amalfi, to whom
he was paying attentions. And although Lucrezia laughed at the story, and
pretended to disbelieve it, her heart was rent by jealousy and despair,
and a longing to travel away, to cross the sea, to tear her lover from
temptation, to--to speak for a few moments quietly--oh, very
quietly--with this Teodora. Even now, while she stared at the donkeys,
and at Gaspare in his festa suit, with two large, pink roses above his
ears, she put up her hands instinctively to her own ears, as if to pluck
the ear-rings out of them, as the Sicilian women of the lower classes do,
deliberately, sternly, before they begin to fight their rivals, women who
have taken their lovers or their husbands from them.
Ah, if she were only in the Lipari Isles she would speak with Teodora
Amalfi, speak with her till the blood flowed! She set her teeth, and her
face looked almost old in the sunshine.
"Coraggio, Lucrezia!" laughed Gaspare. "He will come back some day
when--when he has sold enough to the people of the isles! But where is
the padrone, Dio mio? Signorino! Signorino!"
Maurice appeared at the sitting-room door and came slowly down the steps.
Gaspare stared. "Eccomi!"
"Why, signorino, what is the matter? What has happened?"
"Happened? Nothing!"
"Then why do you look so black?"
"I! It's the shadow of the awning on my face."
He smiled. He kept on smiling.
"I say, Gasparino, how splendid the donkeys are! And you, too!"
He took hold of the boy by the shoulders and turned him round.
"Per Bacco! We shall make a fine show at the fair! I've got money, lot's
of money, to spend!"