“Yes, I understand,” I interrupted. Francesco was getting gesticulative, and he went on with the fire of a prophet. “Then gave the Signora the beefsteak to Seraphina,” he cried, “and said ‘Smell it thou also.’ And Seraphina, having smelt it, said, ‘Signora, it seems to me very good.’ At that the Signora turned on her like one goaded and cried--‘Thou too art in the plot to cheat me! To-day thou art no more my cook’; and as for the beefsteak--_ecco_! And she threw it down, and danced upon it with both feet together, so that the roof trembled. Also she said many strange words in her own tongue.” And Francesco, like a true artist, did not linger after making his point, but turned on his heel, resisting even the temptation to talk it all over, and went into the house. Here was a bolt from the blue! The summer had begun, there would be no fresh visitors to Alatri till the winter, and Seraphina would be out of place all these months. Antonio’s wages would not keep them both, if Seraphina was out of place, and had to pay for her board and lodging with some friend, and who knew whether Mrs. Mackellar’s wrath would not spread like a devouring flood, and overwhelm Antonio also? Nothing was more likely, for I remembered how on the dismissal of Mrs. Mackellar’s last cook, her washing had been withdrawn from its customary manipulator, simply because she was the cook’s cousin by marriage. How then should Seraphina’s _promesso_ escape? Already the smell of the marriage bake-meats was in the air: they were like to eat them with a sauce of sorrow. To attempt to interfere or to reason with Mrs. Mackellar was out of the question. Her nose would go in the air, and she would say “Hoots!” Those who had heard Mrs. Mackellar say “Hoots” seriously, knew what fear was. Two days have passed after that terrible dance of death on the house-roof, two days of paralysed inaction. There was of course no other subject in the mouth of the folk, and grave groups formed and reformed in the piazza and at Morgano’s, and looked at the question this way and that like impotent conspirators wanting a plan of action. I happened to be sitting at that café before dinner on the second evening, and we were shaking our heads over it all when Mrs. Mackellar herself came snorting and stamping round the corner. Like children detected in some forbidden ecstasy, we all sank into silence. She did not even sit down to enjoy her vermouth, but sipped it standing, with loud, angry sucking noises, as if it was the life-blood of Seraphina. We all froze under the contempt of her blue tremendous eye, and then, most unfairly, she singled me out, and pointing the finger of scorn, hissed at me: