Cavaliere Palmeri was unable to utter a word. Donna Micaela enjoyed his helplessness more than can be described.
She looked him steadily in the eyes. “I do not believe that Domenico has yet learned to recognize a ruin,” she said with emphasis. “The dirty children of Gela play with him every day, and feed him with water-cresses. Domenico seems to be a god in Gela, to say nothing of his--”
Cavaliere Palmeri seemed to have an idea.
“Your railway,” he said; “what did you say about your railway? Perhaps I really can come to-morrow.”
Donna Micaela did not listen to him. She took up her pocket-book.
“I have here a counterfeit old coin,” she said,--“a ‘Demarata’ of nickel. I bought it to show Domenico. He is going to snort.”
She did not answer his attempts to make amends. Now the power was hers. It would take more than that to pacify her.
“Once I opened your knapsack to look at your antiquities. The only thing there was an old grape-vine.”
“What is it to be called? It does not seem to be investigating. Is it perhaps charity; is it perhaps atonement--”
Cavaliere Palmeri struck with his clenched fist on the table so that the glasses and plates rang. It was unbearable. A dignified and solemn old gentleman could not endure such mockery. “As surely as you are my daughter, you must be silent now.”
“Your daughter!” she said, and her gayety was gone in an instant; “am I really your daughter? The children in Gela are allowed to caress at least Domenico, but I--”
“What do you wish, Micaela, what do you want?”
They looked at one another, and their eyes simultaneously filled with tears.
Cavaliere Palmeri opened his arms unconditionally to her. She rose hesitatingly; she did not know if she saw right.
“I know how it is going to be,” he said, grumblingly; “not one minute will I have to myself.”
“Come here and kiss me, Micaela! To-night is the first time since we left Catania that you have been irresistible.”
When she threw her arms about him it was with a hoarse, wild cry which almost frightened him.
In the spring of 1894 the Etna railway was begun; in the autumn of 1895 it was finished. It went up from the shore, made a circuit round the mountain in a wide half-circle, and came down again to the shore.