style="font-size:15px;"> 'No. They are waiting for the mad scene, of course—and my voice is as heavy as lead to-night. I shall not please anyone—and it is the first time I have sung Lucia in Rome. My nerves are in a state—'
'You are not frightened? You—of all people?'
'I am half dead with fright. I am white under my rouge. I can feel it.'
'Poor child!' exclaimed Francesco, softly, and his eyes lightened as he watched her.
'Bah!' Tebaldo shrugged his shoulders and smiled. 'She always says that!'
'And sometimes it is true,' answered Aliandra, with a sharp sigh.
A double rap at the door interrupted the conversation.
'Signorina Basili! Are you ready?' asked a gruff voice outside.
'Yes!' replied the young girl, rising with an effort.
Francesco seized her left hand and kissed it. Tebaldo said nothing, but folded his arms and stood aside. He saw on his brother's dark moustache a few grains of the chalky dust which whitened Aliandra's fingers.
'Do not wait for me when it is over,' she said. 'My aunt is in the house, and will take me home. Good night.'
'Goodbye,' said Tebaldo, looking intently into her face as he opened the door.
She started in surprise, and perhaps her face would have betrayed her pain, but the terribly artificial rouge and powder hid the change.
'Come and see me to-morrow,' she said to Tebaldo, in a low voice, when she was already in the doorway.
He did not answer, but kept his eyes steadily on her face.
'Signorina Basili! You will miss your cue!' cried the gruff voice in the corridor.
Aliandra hesitated an instant, glancing out and then looking again at Tebaldo.
'To-morrow,' she said suddenly, stepping out into the passage. 'To-morrow,' she repeated, as she went swiftly towards the stage.
She looked back just before she disappeared, but there was little light, and Tebaldo could no longer see her eyes.
He stood still by the door. Then his brother passed him.
'I am going to hear this act,' said Francesco, quietly, as though unaware that anything unusual had happened.
Before he was out of the door, he felt Tebaldo's hand on his shoulder, gripping him hard and shaking him a little. He turned his head, and his face was suddenly pale. Tebaldo kept his hand on his brother's shoulder and pushed him back against the wall of the passage, under the solitary gaslight.
'What do you mean by coming here?' he asked. 'How do you dare?'
Francesco was badly frightened, for he knew Tebaldo's ungovernable temper.
'Why not?' he tried to ask. 'I have often been here—'
'Because I warned you not to come again. Because I am in earnest. Because I will do you some harm, if you thrust yourself into my way with her.'
'I shall call for help now, unless you let me go,' answered Francesco, with white lips. Tebaldo laughed savagely.
'What a coward you are!' he cried, giving his brother a final shake and then letting him go. 'And what a fool I am to care?' he added, laughing again.
'Brute!' exclaimed Francesco, adjusting his collar and smoothing his coat.
'I warned you,' retorted Tebaldo, watching him. 'And now I have warned you again,' he added. 'This is the second time. Are there no women in the world besides Aliandra Basili?'
'I knew her first,' objected the younger man, beginning to recover some courage.
'You knew her first? When she was a mere child in Randazzo—when we went to her father about a lease, we both heard her singing—but what has that to do with it? That was six years ago, and you have hardly seen her since.'
'How do you know?' asked Francesco, scornfully.
He had gradually edged past Tebaldo towards the open end of the passage.
'How do you know that I did not often see her alone before she went to Messina, and since then, too?' He smiled as he renewed the question.
'I do not know,' said Tebaldo, calmly. 'You are a coward. You are also a most accomplished liar. It is impossible to believe a word you say, good or bad. I should not believe you if you were dying, and if you swore upon the holy sacraments that you were telling me the truth.'
'Thank you,' answered Francesco, apparently unmoved by the insult. 'But you would probably believe Aliandra, would you not?'
'Why should I? She is only a woman.'
Tebaldo turned angrily as he spoke, and his eyelids drooped at the corners, like a vulture's.
'You two are not made to be believed,' he said, growing more cold, 'I sometimes forget, but you soon remind me of the fact again. You said distinctly this evening that you would go home with our mother—'
'So I did,' interrupted Francesco. 'I did not promise to stay there—'
'I will not argue with you—'
'No. It would be useless, as you are in the wrong. I am going to hear the act. Good night.'
Francesco walked quickly down the passage. He did not turn to look behind him, but it was not until he was at the back of the stage, groping his way amidst lumber and dust towards the other side, that he felt safe from any further violence.
Tebaldo had no intention of following. He stood quite still under the gaslight for a few seconds, and then opened the door of the dressing-room again. He knew that the maid was there alone.
'How long was my brother here before I came?' he asked sharply.
The woman was setting things in order, packing the tinsel-trimmed gown which the singer had worn in the previous scene. She looked up nervously, for she was afraid of Tebaldo.
'A moment, only a moment,' she answered, not pausing in her work, and speaking in a scared tone.
Tebaldo looked at her and saw that she was frightened. He was not in the humour to believe anyone just then, and after a moment's silence, he turned on his heel and went out.
CHAPTER VI
'What strange people there are in the world,' said Corona Saracinesca to her husband, on the morning after the dinner at which the Corleone family had been present.
Giovanni was reading a newspaper, leaning back in his own especial chair in his wife's morning room. It was raining, and she was looking out of the window. There
