“And is your aunt alone now?”
“Oh, no; Olimpia is sitting there.”
On my side I hesitated,cheap moncler jackets. “Shall we then step in there?” And I nodded at the parlor; I wanted more and more to be on the spot.
“We can’t talk there — she will hear us.”
I was on the point of replying that in that case we would sit silent, but I was too conscious that this would not do, as there was something I desired immensely to ask her. So I proposed that we should walk a little in the sala, keeping more at the other end, where we should not disturb the old lady. Miss Tita assented unconditionally; the doctor was coming again, she said, and she would be there to meet him at the door. We strolled through the fine superfluous hall, where on the marble floor — particularly as at first we said nothing — our footsteps were more audible than I had expected. When we reached the other end — the wide window, inveterately closed, connecting with the balcony that overhung the canal — I suggested that we should remain there, as she would see the doctor arrive still better. I opened the window and we passed out on the balcony. The air of the canal seemed even heavier, hotter than that of the sala. The place was hushed and void; the quiet neighborhood had gone to sleep. A lamp, here and there, over the narrow black water, glimmered in double; the voice of a man going homeward singing, with his jacket on his shoulder and his hat on his ear, came to us from a distance. This did not prevent the scene from being very comme il faut, as Miss Bordereau had called it the first time I saw her. Presently a gondola passed along the canal with its slow rhythmical plash, and as we listened we watched it in silence. It did not stop, it did not carry the doctor; and after it had gone on I said to Miss Tita:
“And where are they now — the things that were in the trunk?”
“In the trunk?”
“That green box you pointed out to me in her room. You said her papers had been there; you seemed to imply that she had transferred them.”
“Oh, yes; they are not in the trunk,” said Miss Tita.
“May I ask if you have looked?”
“Yes, I have looked — for you.”
“How for me, dear Miss Tita? Do you mean you would have given them to me if you had found them?” I asked,cheap retro jordan, almost trembling.
She delayed to reply and I waited. Suddenly she broke out, “I don’t know what I would do — what I wouldn’t!”
“Would you look again — somewhere else?”
She had spoken with a strange unexpected emotion, and she went on in the same tone: “I can’t — I can’t — while she lies there. It isn’t decent.”
“No, it isn’t decent,” I replied gravely. “Let the poor lady rest in peace.” And the words, on my lips,fake chanel bags, were not hypocritical, for I felt reprimanded and shamed.
Miss Tita added in a moment, as if she had guessed this and were sorry for me, but at the same time wished to explain that I did drive her on or at least did insist too much: “I can’t deceive her that way. I can’t deceive her — perhaps on her deathbed.”
“Heaven forbid I should ask you, though I have been guilty myself!”
“You have been guilty?”
“I have sailed under false colors.” I felt now as if I must tell her that I had given her an invented name, on account of my fear that her aunt would have heard of me and would refuse to take me in. I explained this and also that I had really been a party to the letter written to them by John Cumnor months before.
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