She gently pressed the point against Settimia’s cheek.

“Don’t move, or you will scratch yourself,” she said, as the woman tried to draw back her face.  “Now, will you tell me where Signor Corbario is?  I want to know.”

Settimia must have feared Corbario more than she feared Regina and the sharp pin at that moment, for she shook her head and set her teeth.  Perhaps she believed that Regina was only threatening her, and did not mean to do her any real bodily hurt; but in this she was misled by Regina’s very quiet manner.

“I shall wait a little while,” said Regina, almost indifferently, “and then, if you do not tell me, I shall begin to kill you.  It may take a long time, and you will scream a good deal, but nobody will hear you.  Now think a little, and decide what you will do.”

Regina laid the pin upon the floor beside her, drew up her knees, and clasped her hands together over them, as the hill women often sit for hours when they are waiting for anything.

Her face hardened slowly until it had an expression which Marcello had never seen.  It was not a look of cruelty, nor of fierce anticipated satisfaction in what she meant to do; it was simply cold and relentless, and Settimia gazed with terror on the splendid marble profile, so fearfully distinct against the dark wall in the bright light of the lamp.  The strength of the woman, quietly waiting to kill, seemed to fill the room; her figure seemed to grow gigantic in the terrified eyes of her prisoner; the slow, regular heave of her bosom as she breathed was telling the seconds and minutes of fate, that would never reach an hour.

It is bad to see death very near when one is tied hand and foot and cannot fight for life.  Most people cannot bear the sight quietly for a quarter of an hour; they break down altogether, or struggle furiously, like animals, though they know it is perfectly useless and that they have no chance.  Anything is easier than to lie still, watching the knife and wondering when and where it is going to enter into the flesh.

Regina sat thinking and ready.  She wished that she had Corbario himself in her power, but it was something to have the woman who had helped him.  She was very glad that she had insisted on keeping Settimia in spite of Marcello’s remonstrances.  It had made it possible to obtain the information he wanted, and which, she felt sure, was to lead to Corbario’s destruction.  She was to find out “at any cost”; those had been Marcello’s words, and she supposed he knew that she would obey him to the letter.  For she said to herself that he was the master, and that if she did not obey him in such a matter, when he seemed so much in earnest, he would be disappointed, and angry, and would then grow quickly tired of her, and so the end would come.  “At any cost,” as he had said it in his haste, meant to Regina at the cost of blood, and life, and limb, if need were.  Corbario was the enemy