"Oh yes--if you like," answered Veronica, laying her head down upon the
pillow, sleepy again.
The maid bent over her and drew the things up about her neck in a
half-tender, motherly way, looking at the girl's face. Then she
hesitated before putting out the light.
"Excellency," she said, "let us go to Muro. The air of this house is not
good for you. It is damp, and you are pale in these days. In the
mountains the colour will come back. 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.
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