and repelled me the first time I saw it, I mean her cold hard eye. And although she’s the youngest she doesn’t look it, she has the ageless look of women who seem not to grow any older, but seem never to have been young either. You see her every day, you don’t notice the hardness of her face. That’s why, on reflection, I can’t take Sortini’s passion for her very seriously, perhaps he sent the letter simply to punish her, but not to summon her.” “I won’t argue about Sortini,” said Olga, “for the Castle gentlemen everything is possible, let a girl be as pretty or as ugly as you like. But in all the rest you’re utterly mistaken so far as Amalia is concerned. I have no particular motive for winning you over to Amalia’s side, and if I try to do it it’s only for your own sake. Amalia in some way or other was the cause of our misfortunes, that’s true, but not even my father, who was the hardest hit, and who was never very sparing of his tongue, particularly at home, not even my father has ever said a word of reproach to Amalia even in our very worst times. Not because he approved of her action, he was an admirer of Sortini’s, and how could he have approved of it? He couldn’t understand it even remotely, for Sortini he would have been glad to sacrifice himself and all that was his, although hardly in the way things actually happened, as an outcome apparently of Sortini’s anger. I say apparently, for we never heard another word from Sortini; if he was reticent before then, from that day on he might as well have been dead. Now, you should have seen Amalia at that time. We all knew that no definite punishment would be visited on us. We were only shunned. By the village and by the Castle. But while we couldn’t help noticing the ostracism of the village, the Castle gave us no sign. Of course we had had no sign of favour from the Castle in the past, so how could we notice the reverse? This blankness was the worst of all. It was far worse than the withdrawal of the people down here, for they hadn’t deserted us out of conviction, perhaps they had nothing very serious against us, they didn’t despise us then as they do today, they only did it out of fear, and were waiting to see what would happen next. And we weren’t afraid of being stranded, for all our debtors had paid us, the