was no more to take, nor to be given to her.  Waking suddenly, she had heard Elettra’s anxious voice, giving the strong impression that she was really in present peril.  Then she had really thought that she heard another footstep, somewhere, while Elettra was standing still beside her.  It had only been the cat, of course.  It was such a very fat cat, as Elettra said, and the floors were of the old-fashioned sort, laid on wooden beams, and trembled very easily, as they do in old Italian houses.  But each detail had fitted with another, into a sort of whole which was a reflexion of the priest’s story.  Some of it all at once looked true, and instead of going to sleep at once, Veronica’s eyes were wide open, and she turned uneasily on her pillow.

Of course, it was absurd, for she had received the money when she had insisted upon having it, and if Elettra’s room was damp, that quite explained her presence.  Besides, Elettra could not be supposed to know what Don Teodoro had said to Veronica.  And then, there was the rest of the story, all that connected Bosio and Matilde.  She absolutely refused to think of believing that.  She would not even admit that there might have been some little foundation for it in the past.

Instinctively driving away the thought, she began to say certain prayers for the poor man, and little by little, repeating the words often, her mind grew calm, and she fell asleep once more.  Yet in her sleep the needle of doubt ran through the little bits of memories, one by one, threading them in one continuous string.  There was Bianca Corleone’s look of blank surprise when Veronica had first spoken of a possible marriage with Bosio, and there was Taquisara’s bold assertion, tallying with the priest’s, that the Macomer wanted her fortune, and there was very vividly before her the gnawing anxiety she had seen in Matilde’s face until the latter had caught sight of the artificial flower on that memorable evening.  And the string on which the beads of memory were threaded was her long-repressed but profound distrust of Gregorio Macomer.  It had seemed a wicked prejudice, a gratuitously false judgment, based upon something in his face, and she had always fought against it as unworthy, besides being irrational.  Then, too, there was the will she had signed a fortnight since, for the sake of peace.  If there was nothing in what the priest had said, why had they been so terribly anxious to get the document executed without delay?  It was scarcely natural.  And there were fifty other details, turns of phrases, changes of expression, little words of Gregorio’s spoken in an enigmatic tone to his wife, which Veronica had not understood, but which she had therefore remembered, and which could mean that he was on the verge of ruin, and in great trouble of mind about his affairs.  Amidst the wildly shifting scenery of dreams, the little doll figures of abiding facts out of memory joined hands in procession, showing their faces one