'Busy as usual,' the Marquis di Formosa muttered, in a hoarse voice that gave an idea of emotion, for it looked as if rage had made him lose his voice.
'Yes, like yourself,' Don Gennaro replied darkly.
'I have no business to do,' Formosa replied, in a still more undecided and shy manner. 'Is Signora Parascandolo well?'
'She is quite well,' Parascandolo said, at once suspecting something under the question. 'How is Lady Bianca Maria?'
'She is rather in poor health,' the old man said, hanging his head.
'Good-morning, my lord,' Parascandolo answered at once, taking the opportunity to go off.
'Good-morning, sir,' Formosa said, touching his hat, and looking after the usurer mechanically.
He went slowly up the big stair, frightfully bored by that meeting, thinking at once he must change houses and carry Felicetta off to a far-away part; and he slackened his steps to see if the Marquis were asking the porter where Don Gennaro Parascandolo was going to. But Formosa had gone off. When the usurer got to the second landing, again he heard a whiff; a flash passed before his eyes, as if the mystical warning was being repeated persistently because he had taken no notice the first time. Again holding on to the railings, he thought over where that call could come from, and told himself he must be dreaming, as there was nothing about. That love, carefully hidden, made him as superstitious as a woman.
'There must be spirits in this house,' he said to Felicetta during his call, as he could not get over his absent-mindedness. 'Twice in coming upstairs I felt as if someone was calling me, and I could not make out where the voice came from, or if it really was a voice.'
'This house has certainly a queer lot of lodgers,' said the girl. 'Day and night a number of suspicious-looking people come and go. The other evening, as I was watering my flowers on my balcony, I thought I heard cries and complaints coming from the first-floor. Then all was silent; I heard no more.'
'They must have been spirits,' said Don Gennaro, laughing unwillingly. 'Would you like to go to another house?'
'Yes, very much--a small house, with more sun.'
'On the Vittorio Emanuele Corso would you like?'
