"Signorina," he said, "we can't do anything."
His voice was fatalistic.
"But--what is it? Is--is--"
A frightful question was trembling on her lips. She looked again at
the fragments of card-board in her hand, at the broken frame on the
table.
"Can Madre be--"
She stopped. Her terror was increasing. She remembered many small
mysteries in the recent conduct of her mother, many moments when she
had been surprised, or made vaguely uneasy, by words or acts of her
mother. Monsieur Emile, too, he had wondered, and more than once. She
knew that. And Gaspare--she was sure that he, also, had seen that
change which now, abruptly, had thus terribly culminated. Once in the
boat she had asked him what was the matter with her mother, and he
had, almost angrily, denied that anything was the matter. But she had
seen in his eyes that he was acting a part--that he wished to detach
her observation from her mother.
Her trembling ceased. Her little fingers closed more tightly on his
arm.
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