Aliandra was received in Randazzo with that sort of ovation which only Italians accord to a successful artist; and her father's house was filled for a whole day with the respectable townsmen and their wives and daughters, who came to greet her and congratulate her. For the newspapers had informed them of her successes in Rome, and the Sicilian papers had exaggerated the original reports tenfold. The mayor and his wife, the municipal officers, the grey-haired lieutenant of carabineers with his pretty daughter, the rector, the curate, the young emigration agent of the big steamship company with his betrothed bride and her mother, the principal shopkeeper with his wife and children, the innkeeper—in short, all that represented the highest fashion in Randazzo, including Don Tolomeo Bellini, the most important tenant farmer on the great Fornasco estate as well as a small freeholder, whose ancestors had been privileged to bear arms, and who, therefore, ranked as a gentleman and stamped the cheeses from his dairy with a little five-pointed coronet. Basili had formerly hoped to get him for a son-in-law, and he would have been considered a very good match for the notary's daughter.

All Randazzo talked of the singer's return, and the poor people crowded the street to get a look at her. The mayor said she was an honour to the province and to Sicily, and the rector, who had baptized her, expressed his hope that she might be always as good as she was famous, for he distrusted the name of art, but wished the girl well for her father's sake and her own.

Don Atanasio, the apothecary of Santa Vittoria, tried to persuade his daughter to go with him down to Randazzo and pay Aliandra a visit.

'It will divert you a little from your sorrow, my daughter,' he said, shaking his head.

Concetta's dark eyes turned slowly towards her father with a wondering look, as though she were amazed at his audacity and yet pitied his inability to measure her grief.

'The dead need no amusements,' she said, gravely. 'They are very quiet. They wait.'

'Eh—but the living,' objected Don Atanasio. 'We are alive, you know.'

Concetta did not heed what he said.

'The dead are very quiet. They wait for the Judgment and the Resurrection—the judgment of blood, and the resurrection of the innocent. Then they will be alive again.'

Don Atanasio sighed, for his unhappy daughter was no longer like other women. She was of those simple beings for whom life has but one purpose after love has taken possession, and from whom the loved one, dying, takes all purpose away for ever. The old man sighed and looked sideways at her, and a tear ran down his thin, straight nose, and fell upon the plaster he was spreading on the marble slab before him; but his daughter's dark eyes were dry. She was sitting on a little low stool behind one end of the counter, where she could not be seen by any one who might chance to come into the shop. Her head was screened by the great old-fashioned marble mortar.

Don Atanasio laid down the broad mixing-knife he was using, pushed back the black broadcloth cap which Concetta had once embroidered with a design of green leaves, wiped his spectacles, turned away to blow his nose with a large coloured handkerchief, and turned back again to take a long look at the girl. He laid his hand gently on her head, pressing her forehead back until she looked up into his face.

'You wish to make me die also,' he said slowly. 'What have I done that you wish to make me die?'

She looked at him very sadly, and then quickly got hold of his other hand and kissed it with a sort of devotion. She was very fond of him. He patted the back of her head affectionately.

'In truth, my dear,' he said gently, 'if I see you always thus, I shall not live long, for I have only you in the world, and the rest does not matter. But it is not that, since I would die to make you happy. What should it be for me? I am old. I am of no use. They will have another apothecary in Santa Vittoria. That is nothing. My thoughts are for you.'

'Do not think for me,' answered the girl. 'I sit here quietly. I do no harm. And then, when it is later, I go to see my dead one every day.'

'But it is not good to do this always,' objected Don Atanasio, coaxingly. 'That is why I say come down with me to Randazzo to-morrow, and let us go and see the notary Basili, who has broken his leg, and his daughter, the great singer, who has come back from Rome to visit him. She is a good girl, and you can make a little conversation with her. It will be a diversion, a sober diversion, and the air will do you good, and the movement.'

She kissed his hand again, then dropped it, and drew up her black shawl over her head, for she heard a step on the threshold. Don Atanasio heard it too, and immediately took up his mixing-knife and went to work again at the plaster. The newcomer was the lieutenant who commanded the infantry men quartered in Santa Vittoria. He asked for six grains of quinine in three doses.

He was a quiet young fellow, scrupulously neat in his close-fitting tunic with its turned-down velvet collar, his small red moustache, carefully trimmed, and his red hair parted behind and well brushed below his cap. He had singularly bright blue eyes with rough red eyebrows and a bright and healthy but much-freckled complexion.

Don Atanasio proceeded to weigh out the little doses of the valuable drug, and the officer watched him as he cut the clean white paper into smaller sizes and neatly folded each package.

'Do you know all those Pagliuca brothers?' he asked suddenly.

The apothecary stopped in his work and looked at him keenly. The officer was a Piedmontese, and was, therefore, unpopular in the south.

'Eh!' ejaculated the apothecary. 'They formerly lived here. I have seen them.'

Concetta did not stir in her hiding-place at the end of the counter, behind the marble mortar. The officer was silent for a moment, and the apothecary hastily folded the last package, slipping one end of the doubled paper into the other, as chemists do, and taking up another sheet of paper in which to wrap the three doses together.

'One of them has suddenly returned here,' said the officer. 'He is in the neighbourhood, and is not here for any good purpose. Most probably he has come to do some injury to the gentleman who killed his brother, the brigand.'

In spite of herself Concetta drew a sharp breath between her teeth. The officer's eyes turned inquisitively towards the corner where she sat.

'It is the cat,' said Don Atanasio, calmly. 'One lira and fifty centimes, Signor Lieutenant,' he added, handing the officer the package across the counter.

'They say that it is Francesco Pagliuca who has come back, and that he was seen this morning in Randazzo,' said the young man, while he counted out the money in big coppers; for, as usual in the south, there was a scarcity even of the flimsy little paper notes. 'We do not know him by sight, you see,' he continued, 'and I should be very glad of any information, if you should see him in the village. One thirty—forty—fifty—there it is.'

He laid the last copper on the marble slab.

'A thousand thanks, Signor Lieutenant,' said Don Atanasio, collecting the coins.

'And you will let us know if you see the young man?' asked the officer.

'You shall be served,' replied the apothecary, gravely.

The officer thanked him, nodded, and went out, with a little clattering of his light sabre. When he was gone, Don Atanasio's grave face relaxed in a smile.

'And those are the men who expect to rule us Sicilians,' he said in a low voice, more to himself than to his daughter. 'They wish to catch a man. What do they do? They warn his friends by asking questions. What can such people catch? A crab, as we say, that will bite their own fingers. Then they complain. They are like children. They do not even know what the mafia is, and they come to Sicily.'

Concetta sat quite still in her corner, thinking. It seemed to her sure that Francesco Pagliuca had come to kill Orsino Saracinesca, for his brother's sake. That was what the officer thought, and all the soldiers would be looking out for Francesco, and on the smallest excuse he would be arrested on mere suspicion. It did not strike her that he could possibly have come for any other purpose, and her one desire was that Orsino should be killed. That was man's work, that killing, and she would leave it to the men. But if none of them would do it, she would some day take her father's gun and wait for Orsino at the cemetery, for he often passed that way. She was not afraid to kill him, but she considered it to be the duty and business of the Corleone men. They had prior rights, and, besides, they were men. A woman should not do any killing so long as there were men to do it, except in self-defence.

It was clearly her duty, she thought, to warn Francesco that the soldiers were aware of his presence in the neighbourhood. It would be much wiser of him, she reflected, to communicate with the outlaws who were about Noto, and get half a dozen resolute fellows to help him. She had no knowledge of his character, though she had often met him, and she supposed him to be like his brothers, bold and determined. So she wished to warn him, in order that he might safely accomplish what she supposed must be his purpose.

The difficulty lay in finding him. Her father might help her, perhaps, but it was doubtful. It was quite certain that he could not say or do anything which could thwart Francesco's plans, but, on the other hand, she knew that he would be careful not to seem to help him, for he had to keep on good terms with the authorities, for the simple reason that he held a government license as apothecary, which could easily be taken from him.

'Did you know that Francesco Pagliuca had come back?' she asked, after a long silence, during which the plaster had been finished, folded up, and laid aside ready to be called for.

'I knew,' answered Don Atanasio, but he did not seem inclined to say anything more.

'Why did you not tell me, father?' asked the girl.

'It might have given you pain, my child. And then, one does not say everything one knows. One forgets many things. He slept at the house of Don Taddeo, the grocer.'

'Where is he now? Is he still here?'

'Who shall say where he is? Heaven knows where he is. I cannot know everything.'

He answered with a little irritation, for he understood that Concetta wished to see her dead lover's brother, and he could not understand how any good could come of the meeting.

Concetta rose slowly to her feet and came out from behind the counter. She had grown very thin, but she was not less beautiful. She drew her black shawl together under her chin, and it fell over her forehead to her eyes. There was no disguise in it, for everyone knew her, but she felt that it gave her some privacy in her grief, even in broad day and in the street.

'I go to breathe the air,' she said quietly, moving towards the door.

'Go, my daughter, you need it,' answered the apothecary.

He watched her sadly, and as she went out he moved to the entrance of the shop and looked after her. Tall, sad, and black, and graceful, she walked smoothly along the shady side of the street, which was deserted in the blazing noon. Don Atanasio did not go in again till she had turned the corner and was out of sight.

She found the grocer's brother, the fat and cross-eyed sacristan, eating dark brown beans out of an earthen bowl with an iron fork, in the open shop. No one else was there. It was a cool, vaulted place, with a floor of beaten cement and volcanic ashes, and a number of big presses in a row behind a long walnut counter, black and polished with age. Hams and sides of bacon hung from the ceiling, and the air smelt of salt pork, cereals, and candles. The fat man sat on a bench, in his shirt sleeves, eating his beans with a sort of slow voracity. He looked up as Concetta's shadow darkened the door.

'Will you accept?' he asked, lifting his earthen bowl a little as he spoke.

'Thank you, and good appetite,' answered the girl. 'How are you?'

'Always to serve you, most gentle Concetta,' said the man. 'What do you need?'

'Eat,' replied Concetta, sitting down upon a rush-bottom chair. 'I do not come to disturb you. Are you all alone?' She peered into the shadows at the back of the shop.

'Eh, you know how it is? Taddeo eats and then goes to sleep, and while he sleeps I keep the shop. In truth, it needs no great merchant to do that, for no one comes at this hour.'

'And you and your brother do not eat together?'

'Generally we do, but to-day, who knows how it was? He ate first and went to sleep. Then I brought my beans here for company. This is our conversation. I open my mouth, and before I can speak the beans answer me. This I call, indeed, conversation.'

'And Francesco Pagliuca, with whom does he converse upstairs?' asked Concetta, lowering her voice.

The man looked up quickly, with his mouth full, as though to see whether she were in earnest and knew the truth. A glance convinced him that she did.

'He went to Randazzo at dawn,' he said, almost in a whisper. 'He makes love with the notary's daughter there.'

Concetta did not believe that this could be the only reason for Francesco's return.

'Why does he not stay at Randazzo, then?' she enquired. 'Why should he come here at all? It is a long way.'

'Perhaps he is afraid of Basili's friends,' suggested the fat man. 'Or he prefers to sleep here because the air is better. He will certainly not tell us why he comes.'

'Is he coming back this evening?'

'I think so, for he has a box here with his clothes, and other things. But for charity's sake, tell no one.'

'I?' Concetta laughed in a cold way, without a smile. 'I wish to warn him that the soldiers know he was in Randazzo yesterday, and are looking out for him.'

She told the man of the lieutenant's visit to her father's shop, and he listened attentively.

'I could wait for him in the road,' he said. 'He thought that the soldiers would not know him here, because they are all new men. But they have seen him in Randazzo and have sent word. They think that he has come on account of the Saracinesca, but he has followed the notary's daughter from Rome. They cannot touch him so long as he does no harm.'

'They may prevent him from doing it,' said Concetta, looking steadily at the man.

'That would be a pity,' he answered gravely. 'I will wait for him in the road.'

'But if he comes by the bridle-path over the hills, you will miss him.'

'I do not think he will do that, for it is a bad road, and he had my brother's best horse to ride.'

'Go and wait in the bridle-path,' said Concetta. 'I will wait in the road, towards Camaldoli.'

'He will not come before sunset,' observed the sacristan. 'That crazy priest of the Saracinesca, Don Ippolito, comes to play the organ in Santa Vittoria every day, and pays me to blow the bellows, and he never goes away till twenty-three o'clock.'

Twenty-three of the clock is half an hour before the sun sets, at all times of the year, by the old reckoning, which is still in use in the south.

'You can send a boy to blow the bellows,' suggested Concetta. 'You cannot trust anyone to warn Francesco Pagliuca.'

They both supposed that since enquiry was being made for him, he would be in imminent danger of arrest, with or without any legal grounds, an opinion sufficiently indicative of the state of the country. The man stared blankly at the wall for a few seconds after Concetta had last spoken, then nodded, and began to eat again.

The girl rose from her chair, and moved towards the door with her graceful, slowly-cadenced step. She had done what she had come to do and was quite sure of the man, as indeed she had reason to be, for the mafia protects its own, and generally has its own way in the end, in spite of governments and soldiers. If Concetta and the fat sacristan asked no one to help them, it was because it was such a very simple matter to warn Francesco of danger, that they needed no assistance. But as they needed none, they told no one what they were going to do.

Concetta came home again to the quiet little shop, and Don Atanasio bolted the glass door, and they both went upstairs to dinner. The girl ate a little better than usual, and sipped half a glass of strong, black wine.

'The air did you good,' observed her father, looking at her. 'Eh, this human body! What is it? Who shall ever understand it? You go out every afternoon, when it is cool, for two hours, and it does you no good, and you eat no more than a bee takes from a flower. And to-day you go out for half an hour into a heat that would burn up paving-stones, and you come back with an appetite. So much the better. It is not I that should complain, if you ate the house and the walls, poor child.'

'When the heart is thirsty for blood, the body is not hungry for meat,' said the beautiful, white-faced girl, in her clear, low voice.