Like it, indeed!"
"No doubt it was provoking enough. And your adopted daughter,
Signora Steno, would not be the right-minded and well-brought-up
girl I take her to be, if she did not express to you her disgust at
such goings on," said the sympathizing lawyer.
"You may say that. She expressed it plain enough and not to me only,
but to the Marchese himself well, when she saw him afterwards. She
let him know what she thought of the painted huzzy. And she told
him, too, some more of the truth. She told him that the creature
knew well enough what she was doing, or trying to do. The way she
looked straight up at my poor child in the box, where we were, was
enough to make the blood curdle in your veins. If ever I saw a face
look hatred, it was the face of that woman when she looked up at our
box. She looked at the poor child as if she could have taken her
heart's blood. She did. Ah! bless your heart, she knew all about it.
Talk of the old Marchese, indeed. Yes; the creature had set her mind
upon being Marchesa di Castelmare. Not a doubt of it; but it was the
nephew she wanted, not the uncle; and she knew that my Paolina stood
in the way of her scheming; and Paolina knew that she knew it."
Old Orsola paused, out of breath with the length and vehemence of
the tirade, which her feelings had prompted her to utter with
crescendo violence.
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