"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!"




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