At last they went away, and Matilde set the tall candlesticks on each side of the velvet thing, and looked at it again.  Then she, too, with still covered head, went towards the door.  But between the coffin and the door, she stood still, swaying a little, till she fell to her full length backwards and straight, as a cypress tree falls when it is cut down.  But she was not dead, for she was too strong to die then.  The servants carried her away to her own room, calling others to help them, for she was heavy, and they had to take her down the stairs.  It was afternoon then, and when she came to herself and opened her eyes, she bitterly cursed the day, for it would have been good to die.  But she never went again to the room where she had watched.

She lay still a long time, alone in silence.  Then, from a room beyond hers, came the wild crash of her husband’s laughter.  She sat up.  Her face was grim and terrible, ghastly and stained with rouge, as the shawl fell back upon her shoulders.  She sat up and listened, and her smooth lips twisted themselves angrily, one against the other, as a tiger’s sometimes do, when there is blood in the air.  She knew now that she was really alive, for she thought of Veronica.

Veronica had not known in the night.  Her rooms were at the farther end of the apartment in a quiet part of the house, and when she had left Bosio she had gone to bed immediately and had dismissed her maid.  Elettra came from the room to find the household in the hideous uproar and confusion which first followed the discovery of Bosio’s death.  Elettra was a wise woman as well as a revengeful one.  By the deeds of the Macomer, as she looked at it, her own husband had been killed, and she had cursed their house, living and dead.  She had blood now, for her blood, and in the dark corridor she smiled once.  But no one should disturb Veronica, and she stood there, where any one must pass to go to the girl’s room, silent, satisfied, watchful.  She loved her mistress, as she hated all the Macomer, body and soul, alive and dead.  Some foolish women of the household would have roused Veronica, for they came, two together, asking in loud hysterical voices, whether she knew.  But Elettra kept them off, and took the news herself in the morning when Veronica rang for her.

“A terrible thing has happened in the night,” she said, when she had opened the windows.

Veronica opened her eyes wide and then rubbed them slowly with her slim, dark fingers and looked again at Elettra.

“It is a very terrible thing,” continued the woman, gravely.  “It happened in the night, and all was confusion, but I would not let them disturb you.  They heard the pistol-shot and broke down the door.  He was already dead.  He had shot himself.”

“Who?” asked Veronica, in instant horror.  “Some one in the house?  A servant?”

Elettra shook her head.

“No.  I would not tell you—­but you must know.  It was Count Bosio.”